Paul and Silas in Thessalonica
Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd. And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.” And the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things. And when they had taken money as security from Jason and the rest, they let them go.
Acts 17:1-9

Of all of Paul’s undisputed letters, Thessalonians might be the most difficult one to engage as modern readers. This is at least in part because of its apocalyptic language, but it’s also because this is understood to be the earliest of Paul’s writings, and thus reflective of a thought process that Paul would go on to flesh out over the course of his travels and ministry with more focus and clarity. It represents itself as raw, emotionally driven, and in many ways a very particular fashion. The praise and admonishments and call that we find in its words don’t easily translate across cultural experiences and eras. Add into this mix the tension that exists between the 1st and 2nd letter, with a good deal of certainty surrounding the first letter and a good deal of uncertainty plaguing the second, and these two books represent a challenging effort for exposition, translation and engagement.

Ancient, But Still Relevant
In this though, the letter (and letters) are certainly still relevant and important for us as engaged readers of scripture, particularly in its early expression of Apocalyptic thought and the developing Pauline context. For one who is reading Acts, it operates as a bit of a balloon bubble, narrowing us in on Paul’s travels to the city (and his ministering to the pagan Gentiles in Thessalonica 1:9-10), being pushed out of that city (Acts 17:5-8), and later sending Timothy (1 Thes 3:11-12) in his stead to see how they were doing in his absence (1 Thes 3:6). The context for the first letter (and possibly the second) is a letter written in response to Timothy’s accompanying word that, despite the few issues they were facing as a community of believers, they were doing well.

Positive, Affirming, and Admonishing Words
A good deal of the book is positive and affirming towards this end, with the latter chapters narrowing in on a call to keep going the way they are, but in this toalso push themselves to do just a little bit more in response to some of the struggles that Timothy has made Paul aware of.

Of special interest to Paul is restoring their hope in the risen Christ as one who liberates both those who are alive and those who are dead (3:10; 4:13). This focus is significant because it sheds light on the early communities and their understanding of Jesus within what scholars call an “apocalyptic” understanding. Most, if not all, the books in the New Testament are heavily influenced by this apocalyptic movement born from the late Old Testament period and the Inter-testament period, where we see the Jewish understanding of Resurrection (at the end of time) being shaped against Greco-Roman ideas of the afterlife (especially in their idea of hell) and the reality of the growing oppression that saw the Messiah as one who was coming to liberate the Jews in the here and now.

In a pagan Gentile environment (Thessalonica, the Capital of a Roman Province, was a key place for trade and Greco-Roman philosophical development), there would have been confusion over reconciling the Resurrection hope (the return of Jesus) as something meant for them (who were still alive) in their current struggles, persecution and oppression. This was a similar expectation they had of Jesus being raised up as the liberator of the Jews before His death. Thus, making sense of Jesus’ death as liberation for the Thessalonians was a hope they had for the here and now as they waited patiently for the promised return. Only their oppression continued, people started dying, and their patience was being tested. They started to wonder where is Jesus, leading to questions about exactly what their expectations were when it came to their liberation and how it would happen, with a key question being, did those who died miss out? And if so, how do we grieve for them? (1 Thes 3:10; 4:13) This left them in a state of depression, a feeling of unpredictability and carrying a heavy emotional response.

The Power of Witness- Faith Hope and Love
This is why Paul begins with immediate words of encouragement, with Paul exhorting the virtues of faith, hope and love. (1 Thes 1:3) as affirming qualities, moving to establish their own witness as proof that God (and their life in Christ) was still working in their midst through these virtues (1:5-7). By establishing this basic train of logic, Paul underscores that his witness (through the Spirit of Christ) empowered them to be imitators of Christ, and thus their witness was empowering others in Thessalonica to be imitators of Christ, going forth “everywhere” on their behalf. Paul leads them towards a sense of independence, trusting that their faith is theirs, not Pauls, giving to them at the beginning of time. The Spirit of Jesus is working in their midst, and all they have to do is look around them to know this is true. This is the reason that Paul is able to confidently speak of them as the “chosen” people, an important declaration for them to hold on to as Gentiles in the midst of their ongoing suffering (2:4) and waiting (1:10). Paul is able to remind them that their waiting and their suffering is not counter to his own witness, pointing out that he told them they would face oppression (3:4). This is not a reason to doubt their witness to others.

Formative Faith and Faith For the Future
Paul intentionally contrasts the nature of their faith in their (shared) liberation with the reality of their experience as they (the living and the dead) wait for Christ’s liberation. The character of their (shared) faith is given a gentle trait, described as a nursing mother, using the language of humility and of serving others giving of themselves, and later like a father’s relationship to his child (2:11). This is all formative language that speaks to the ongoing nature of faith’s expression.

This is also why Paul is interested in connecting the Spirits work with their work, emphasizing that the witness of the spirit and their willingness to live in the Spirit in the everyday go hand in hand. Hard work is important when it comes to holding or losing hope (2:9), and Paul eventually instructs them to “live quietly”, “mind their own affairs” and to “work with their hands” (a fulfillment of Jeremiah’s covenant), which is one of the places where he provides both a gentle admonition and a slight correction to their current behavior. In their waiting, and in their suffering, the inclination is that they had apparently slipped into modes of depression and anxiety, causing them to depend on the money and work of others rather than bearing out the witness of the Spirit through their involvement in society in honest and contributive ways. This same admonition is found later in 2nd Thes 3:6-10.

Of concern for Paul is that love of others is ultimately shaped by the Spirit’s witness, which is self giving not taking, and arrives and is expressed through their love for others (4:9). This same love is then filtered out into a particular example from their experience, which is the struggle with and engagement in sexual immorality as part of the Greco-Roman world they are a part of (4:3). The will of God, Paul says, their sanctification, is to abstain from sexual immorality. “God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness” (4:7). The point Paul continues to make here is that the Spirits witness and their witness goes hand in hand as it expresses love outwardly, and sexual immorality (however this is interpreted from their particular situation) is antithetical to this love as it is the oppression of others in exchange for their own desires (idolatry).

From the Particular to the Apocalyptic
Here Paul starts to evoke more obvious and aware apocalyptic language. “But you are not in Darkness… you are children of the Light” (5:4) Paul declares. He pulls from this language, speaking of day and night, dark and light as metaphorical images that can help place their “waiting” and “enduring” as a spiritual practice into a greater spiritual reality. This is the hope they have, that Christ will liberated those who are dead and alive, so Paul challenges them not to grieve as “those without hope” (4:13), but rather as those with a greater vision of what God is doing through Jesus (making what is wrong right). He then cleverly spins this back, using the same imagery of the spiritual armor we find in Ephesians, to their fear and question surrounding those who had died. He takes that fear (grieving as those without hope) and places it in a more hopeful context by calling them to “stay awake” in the here and now, once again connecting their current practice with the bigger picture as a way of holding onto hope. The challenge here is both an affirmation and an admonition, with the call to stay awake then leading into the call to rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all (5:18), all language that requires one to “stay awake” so that as they wait they can help all who are struggling, a definitive expression and response of love that stands over the sexual immorality and their taking from others (5:14). 

The Controversy of Thessalonians
There are two key controversial elements of these letters, the first being that infamous phrase in 2:15 that declares that the “Jews killed Jesus”, and the difficult apocalyptic language that we find in 2 Thessalonians that uses hard and fast language to reference God’s judgement at the desruction of the wicked. Before speaking to those two elements, a brief word on the second letter.

2 Thessalonians In Context
The two letters are set together because of some obvious shared characteristics in the first few verses along with the tradition of early readers, but there are key differences that have caused scholars to long since question that they belong together as part of the Pauline tradition. This is of particular concern with the apocalyptic language that emerges.

On an immediate level, giving thanks in hearing that they are “doing well”, which is cited as evidence of their witness (1:5) and as something they can trust in, reminds us of the first letter and establishes a similar concern. It is in 2 Thes 1:9 that the language and concern turns towards an emphasis on the the final liberation using apocalyptic language. It is from this that we get this exposition of thought surrounding how understanding the final liberation can give them (if the audience is the same as those in Thessalonica) further hope. It shifts the focus from the present focus of the first letter to the future expectation, establishing this against the second coming of Christ, the coming of the “man of lawlessness”, and eventually (finally) the justice of God that they long for prevailing in their midst through the eternal destruction of their oppressors (those who do not obey the Gospel and know God 2 Thes 1:9), which leads to their liberation (those who know God).

In the flow of this narrative picture, the rebellion and man of lawlessness (2:3) comes before Christ, and arrives in the form of Christ (powers and signs and wonders). The parallels to Jesus’ own descriptive ministry are intentional, speaking of the “mystery of lawlessness” as already at work (2 Thes 2:7) in the same way that so much of Paul’s teaching understands salvation to already be at work in the already-not yet reality that informs our waiting. Only in the case of the man of lawlessness, they are sent by the Devil rather than God, and comes not in revealing truth but rather “deception”.

The Controversy: What Do We Do With This Apocalyptic Language?
This sort of language is admittedly difficult for modern ears to wrap our minds around. It stands a good distance from some of the more familiar and practical pictures of faith we find in letters like Philippians, Corinthians and Galatians. Depictions of eternal punishment, hell and condemnation also come rife with all of the baggage of modern interpretations and expressions which sets this apocalyptic language in grand images of the end of the age, the antichrist, destruction, and judgement.

This is far out of my league, and there are plenty of wonderful scholars who have wrestled with this language and its ideas on a far greater level and with more insight than I could ever have myself. But for what it’s worth, here are a couple of key approaches and ideas that I have found and borrowed along the way (of my own spiritual journey) that have been helpful in coming to, encountering and reading passages like this.

Apocalyptic Language as Present and Future Focus
As I mentioned earlier, apocalyptic language comes from a tradition that informs the whole of the New Testament writings. You see it all over the Gospels, and in books like 2nd Thessalonians, Jude, 1st and 2nd Peter and the mother of them all, Revelation. This is a tradition that emerges from this crossroads between Jesus’ ministry and the later age of Jewish tradition (the Prophets, and books like Daniel). It is also very apparent in the extra-Biblical material, playing into that long process of deciding which books belonged in the canon of Jesus’ witness (the key concern for the NT) and which books veered into more Gnostic expressions (of which apocalyptic language can be a part of in its grand emphasis on spiritual imagery and its shared emphasis on “revealed knowledge”, which we find at the root of the word “apocalyptic”, literally rendered “revelation” or “unveiling of the knowledge”, and gnostic, literally rendered “knowledge revealed”). Even Revelation was a book that was a very late entry into the canon and tradition for this reason (it’s not even a big part of Eastern Orthodox tradition still)

What informs the development of this language is the Jewish Tradition of the Resurrection, which becomes fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus as “revelation”. In ancient Jewish belief, the emphasis was far more on the here and now, a life lived in witness to God’s work in their midst, with long life in service to the Lord as the gift often sought. Thoughts on the afterlife were present, but they were represented through a quiet confidence in a final Resurrection, not the fleshing out of the final age as a key focus of their concern. What this confidence (in the Resurrection) did was free them up to be concerned with today, which is what we see in much of the Old Testament scripture.

It would be later developments of Jewish understandings of heaven and hell that flowed naturally from their questions concerning the Revelation of God and provided the framework for Apocalyptic language. What is important for understanding this development is that it formed within the belief systems of the surrounding nations, which all held a greater and more defined sense of the afterlife as part of their focus. Apocalyptic language in the Judeo-Christian tradition then reflects the need to locate this shared awareness of the spiritual realm within the unique Revelation of God and ultimately the unique expression of Jesus. It is through this that we find these far more expressive and fleshed out depictions of a future vision in later Old Testament writings being set against the idea of a God who took on flesh and became human (which sets the Judeo-Christian vision apart from every other religious expression that surrounded it in important ways).

What’s important about this is not to do away with these apocalyptic visions of the future as created rather than given realities. It is simply to highlight the fact that apocalyptic language in scripture carries a unique focus on both its future concern and its concern with the here and now. This is its Judeo-Christian concern. For the people of God in scripture, the story has always been one of God’s working in the midst of present struggle. From the get go, the Abrahamic Covenant arrives with a future promise but a present application. In the history of the Israelite Nation, the focus was always on the present oppression and exile and God’s liberation of their present circumstance, which was then set within the future leaning promises of God’s Covenant through the prophetic word of the Prophets. This present-future focus is important, because it allows us to locate passages like this (Thessalonians) both in its history (the Israelite Nation), in its context (the Roman Empire), and its contextualization (our world). And this happens as it did for the ancient Jewish belief in the Resurrection, which is that our hope is found in the promise of what God will do, and our faith comes through the belief that (and our participation with) God is already doing this in our midst.

The Hope For Justice in the Face of Injustice
What flows out of this then is an emphasis on justice. Far too often modern readers tend to take this language and apply it arbitrarily to pictures of a God who judges the wicked simply according to their lack of belief (or for any number of nameless personal transgressions). This spins out into all sorts of theological treaties that places the emphasis of God’s activity on the destruction, the punishment, and the payback, and often with ambiguous definitions of godliness and ungodliness attached. It is from this that we arrive then at (equally) all manners of end times rhetoric that is steeped in fear, an angry God doing what God will do, and the decisive distinguishing of the moral and the immoral (again, ambiguously rendered) within the countless different distinguishing lines that we draw to define the final judgement in identifiable terms (of who is in and who is out).

In its present future focus, the focus of apocalyptic literature is more accurately placed onto matters of “justice”, not judgment, even if both are intertwined. I think for modern ears trying to enter into the ancient language of these scriptures, justice is the shared concern and the way into the narrative. The root of justice means that “what is wrong is being made right”, and when paired with “apocalyptic” as the unveiling and revealing of what is not known, what this language speaks to is precisely the kind of scenario the Thessalonians found themselves in- facing current oppression, and oppression with an uncertain end.

In this way, the emphasis of this revelation (that God will enact justice) is always hopeful, and always contextual. It is framed against the idea that oppression exists, and somehow and in someway justice (making right) will come. This is something that we can all, I think, understand to some degree. In this same way, the wrath of God is placed (always in scripture) on a response to injustice, the same way we might look with anger on the problem of racism, and it arrives in the language of liberation, even if that language might look and sound different than our own. And the more this is set into the whole of scripture and the whole of the Christian narrative, the more expressive and realized this language of liberation becomes as an all encompassing idea.

What God Does and What God Gives us Too
Reminiscent of the hardening of hearts that we find both in ancient narratives like the Exodus story and in the language of the Gospels, we find a difficult phrase attached to the statement in 2 Thessalonians that God “sends a strong delusion so that they will believe what is false and be condemned.” This is in response to the “godlessness” that they are already engaged in. At the core of the modern struggle with apocalyptic language is the idea that this justice is God’s work. While we might be able to relate to justice as a shared hope and demand, once we place this out of our hands and into the hands of God it suddenly becomes a more difficult notion to reconcile. Most of us, I think, don’t like the idea of feeling out of control. And yet, the most important piece of understanding why apocalyptic language was hopeful and not necessarily retributive in nature (although it can lean in those ways when expressed by those facing oppression) is how it is always speaking into a particular power structure. It exists in Judeo-Christian language as a way to give voice to the oppressed. That is where it emerges from, not from the powerful looking to exert power over others, but the weak looking for God’s saving work, from those treated injustly looking for justice.

In this manner, much of this language tends to fluctuate between language that evokes what God is doing (sending a strong delusion) and what the oppressors are already doing (engaging in godlessness), often meaning both at the same time. There is a sense that God is giving the godless over to their own actions, while also upholding his Power to liberate. We find this in 2 Thes 3:1, which follows the act of delusion saying, (So then), because of this Pray that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and deliver of the evil one “Not all have faith, but the Lord is faithful and will establish (you).” This is the reverse of the delusion of the evil one, emphasizing God’s Power over the Power of Sin and Death.

Justice and Mercy Existing Side By Side
Recognizing that the key concern of the witness of Jesus on the Cross is that He delivered the world from the Darkness and the Powers of Sin and Death, one can then understand this working relationship between justice and mercy, two co-existing virtues of God’s grace and the liberation of the oppressed. Paramount to Paul’s developing thought is that when it comes to matters of justice, all of us are on the side of the oppressed and equally the oppressors. What God’s justice is ultimately pulled under is this enveloping picture of liberation for all. It erases our tendency towards arbitrary distinctions regarding God’s Justice and God’s Mercy, and places both of them within God’s concern for the oppressed (which is ultimately all of us as both the oppressed and the oppressor). The reason God’s Justice is so important is because it removes us as the judge. It allows us to lean into the promises of the apocalyptic language in a more fervent and faith filled way, either as those who need to hear we are oppressing others or as those who need to hear of liberation, because what is not yet known will be made known, and what we don’t yet see is already at work. This forms our response to justice and oppression primarily because it allows us to carry this conviction into these places, informing us of God’s grand vision for us and our world together. It is not individual, it is collective, but it arrives at the collective by way of individual concern for this liberating work.

In this way, God’s Justice and Mercy become equal parts of our participation in the promise of the Gospel. We are involved in imparting God’s Justice and Mercy in love, a central facet of the Judeo-Christian Apocalyptic vision. And love (or lack of it) is always described in terms of division and fellowship, self giving and self taking, both key markers of the Thessalonian passage.

A Grand Prophetic Tradition
One cannot read the New Testament outside of its Old Testament context, and the Apocalyptic Tradition can open us up to the language of God in a whole new way. It can help us understand the most crucial point in Israel’s history- the exile. So much of the New Testament stories are framed against the exile, both that from Egypt and the exile from Jerusalem. It is from here that we can gain that picture of waiting, persevering and being formed out of the oppression, struggle and trials of our current time, set against this idea of us as both oppressor (what leads to exile) and the oppressed (the experience of exile). Therefore, one cannot gain a full picture of the language that hits us (modern readers) like a brick in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 without seeing it through the light of Isaiah and Jeremiah, two of it primary reference points and the framework for understanding the “fleeing from God’s presence” (Isaiah 2) that forms the man of lawlessness and those with him.  Set in the time of exile, the language evokes the language of exile by contextualizing it into the experiences of the Thessalonians the same way it would today. This is how Apocalyptic language it supposed to work. With its future emphasis, and recognizing God as the one that will make things right (justice, or justification), we can then move to see God’s working in the here and now, in our midst, actively restoring justice to the injustice places even now.

A Final Word on that Controversial Word
Much has been written about that controversial word in 2:15 which states that the “Jews” were responsible for killing Jesus. Many unfortunate and harmful things have come out of this verse, not to mention it causing many to move away from the faith as they were unable to reconcile it with their picture of a just God.

Again, I am out of my league here and only speaking personally, but just a couple words on framing this passage that possibly connect with our discussion of the Apocalyptic language and its OT context.

1. First, Paul is a Jew himself. If you read the passage I quote from Acts at the head of this post, you will see that as Jew who came to believe in Jesus, this led to difficult relationships between him and his fellow Jews. Although the authorship of 2 Thessalonians is up for question and largely debatable, it is less of a question that we could associate it with Pauline influences to some degree or another.

2. This certainly doesn’t reconcile this passage, but it could give it some context. It is entirely possible that what was an early outflow of Paul’s conversion were both these deep setted feelings he had for himself as a Jew, and likewise his fervent desire for the Jewish people to see and find their own heritage in Christ as well. This places the phrasing in less hostile places, and into a personal context. It is not a phrase that is being lobbied in an external fashion on a group of people in a generalized fashion (from the outside), but rather the  inner workings of someone trying to flesh out their awareness of who they were and who they have come to be. It would have more in line with, in this sense, Paul’s later thoughts on “all” having fallen short than blaming the Jews.

3. Lastly, and importantly, one of the reasons this verse might arrive as such a challenge is because of modern addictions to overly literal ways of reading scripture. This is Paul’s earliest work, and it’s fair to say that whoever wrote the second letter came from a similar place in time. Paul’s ministry and thought process is literally something you can watch play out and develop over the course of his letters. There is a big difference from 1 Thessalonians, Galatians and Romans for example, especially as he begins to flesh out his thoughts on death, the resurrection and atonement. And this reality doesn’t need to diminish scripture. It doesn’t need to separate our feelings that “he said this” and therefore all of scripture is wrong or useless. This deep connection between author, writing, human experience and God’s witness is what actually helps make scripture that much more alive. We can see God working through the stories, the confessions, the shortcomings and the wrestling. It is a deeply human story as much as it is a measure of the Divine witness.

In this spirit, it is perfectly okay to also say that perhaps this phrasing is reflective of a thought process that was still being fleshed out, an emotional response to a particular feeling. We can see and understand this while still upholding scripture as a sacred witness to God’s working in our midst.
 

 

 

About that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the Way. For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsmen. These he gathered together, with the workmen in similar trades, and said, “Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth. And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship.”

When they heard this they were enraged and were crying out, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” So the city was filled with the confusion, and they rushed together into the theater, dragging with them Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians who were Paul’s companions in travel.
– Acts 19:23-29 English Standard Version (ESV)

Reading through Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary by Harold W Hoehner had a massive influence on the way I was able to understand the grand narrative of one of Paul’s (a word on authorship below) least accessible letters. As opposed to the straightforward arguments and sharp eyed focus of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, or the easily digestible and very relatable nature of Philippians call to humility and perseverance, Ephesians arrives soaked in language that evokes the magic, mysticism and grand images of the spirit world that immersed Ephesus through its grand temples and gods. It speaks of an unfolding “mystery” which is wrapped up in this grand narrative of Light and Dark and the Powers that both hold this world captive. The point of this mystery is to “reveal”, with the mystery constantly at work in its revealing, even, as Ephesians declares, in revealing the mystery to the “rulers and authorities in the heavenly places (The Powers).” (3:10)

Add to this the difficult call at the end of the book for “wives” to submit to their husbands and slaves to submit to their masters, followed directly by a call to put on the “spiritual armor” in preparation for what is a “spiritual” battle, and you have language that feels as foreign to readers in the West as it would to one not fluent in Greek trying to read it in the Greek language.

And yet, it’s strangeness for me became part of its appeal. This call to consider a world that felt foreign to me opened up my eyes to a dynamic of the Christian faith that had admittedly been lost in my own push towards rationalism and intellectual approaches as a Western raised individual. To see the Christian faith as an unfolding mystery, and to encounter that mystery within the Grand Narrative of the Powers in the idea of “adoption” (one of Paul’s most ignored theological identities) not only helped me to make better sense of Paul’s more practical writings, but of the whole of the New Testament world and writings.

A Word on Authorship
Which leads me to the question of authorship. Of all the possible Pauline writings, the letter to the Ephesians is the most disputed, largely thanks to its inaccessible nature. If one was to follow Paul’s writings, which represent the earliest writings in the New Testament, through his development (beginning with the letter to the Thessalonians, moving through the straight-forward and ground level nature of Galatians to the crown jewel of Romans) one would be hard pressed to know exactly where to fit Ephesians into the mix.

And yet, this need not leave us leary about fitting Ephesians into the New Testament narrative. Be it John, Peter or Paul, the world of these letters within the movement and growth of the early Church are interconnected, interwoven and are found largely commenting on each other within these movements from here to there and back again throughout the Roman Empire and the area of Asia Minor. To find association here with the Pauline teachings is far less complicated than narrowing down the authorship, and one is able to see many of the markers in Ephesians expressed in John, Peter and Paul.

With that in mind, I am choosing to reference Ephesians according to “author” rather than Paul, keeping in the spirit of scholarship that places this book in a variety of ways either closer to the Pauline movement or a bit further into the grander story that envelops the New Testament world.

Set Apart for the Mystery, Our Adoption into Christ
Ephesians shares an equal concern with the letters of Paul for the idea of being set “apart before the creation of the world.” (1:4) Here, we are being “set apart” for adoption, which the author describes as “His Will”, that will being the “great mystery” that is being revealed through the act of Christ’s redemption in the effort to “unite all things” (1:10). This tells us that division in the “fellowship”, a shared interest of much of the New Testament writings, is of utmost concern.

The idea of “His will” is what then establishes the concept of our “inheritance” in Ephesians, suggesting that through adoption this “hope” (the mystery of our identity in Christ who is uniting all things) becomes ours (the idea of belief) in the revealing of this mystery. This becomes important for understanding the flow of God’s saving work as expressed by the author. Salvation is, in this sense, God’s uniting of all things in Christ, a unity that becomes revealed in our given identity as adopted sons and daughters, a truth that precedes our knowledge of it and a truth that dismantles the division that Christ unifies. This is the nature of the mystery being revealed.   

The Grand Narrative of this Mystery Revealed
To give this a more decisive and practical context, the author turns the attention to the story of the letter’s audience (recipients), saying that when “they heard” this hope, the hope became theirs through belief. This is what the author goes on to pray for in thanksgiving so fervently in the ensuing verses (1:15-23). It’s a beautiful prayer that evokes the wonder of this mystery being made visible in their midst.

This is where author moves us then from the particular of their context into the larger narrative of the Powers that holds this mystery both in play and in conflict- the Powers of Sin and Death and the Power of Christ that defeated Sin and Death (2:1-10). The mystery of our identity is intimately connected to the spiritual forces that are at war in the “heavenly realm”, with our witness revealing the mystery to the “rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” (3:10), thus giving Power to us (3:16) to reveal the mystery to the world. This is why our identity as “adopted” sons and daughters is being revealed, so that the grace that liberates us from the Powers of Sin Death (which divides us) can display God’s workmanship to do good work in the world (2:10) (unifying work). The mystery, Paul says, is a God “for the world” 3:6, and adoption is the great truth that brings the world together into a shared identity regardless of background.

Recalling the great argument of Galatians, we hear the author urge readers to “remember” when they were called “uncircumcised”. This is the very thing that the Power of Christ defeats, is this division of the Law which leads to hostility and a Christ/Body divided against itself. As in Galatians, the Abrahamic Covenant comes to the forefront here, emphasizing the making of one new identity (Christ) out of two (Hagar and Sarah), thus healing the divide. And this is done through the proclamation that Christ is the cornerstone (living stone in 1st Peter), evoking the house metaphor that 1 Peter made alive for us (2:19-21) as a house undivided. This is the spiritual language at work. We are adopted as sons and daughters of God, and what is being revealed to us is our lives as a spiritual house, a house made with living stones and with Christ (and His work) as its foundation. And yet the powerful notion that we find in Ephesians is that this happens within a larger and collective context, one in which the Powers are very real and very alive, and one which which pulls us into the world at large. 

The Reality of the Powers as Our Confidence 
The author uses all of this as the foundation upon which the letter moves to speak to the revealing of this great mystery (our adoption). The truth in Christ is that God has defeated the Powers of Sin and Death. In a world where Darkness exists, the Light shines. It is because this truth precedes the revealing of the mystery (our identity as adopted sons and daughters of God) that we should walk in a manner worthy (of the calling to adoption), this manner being humility, gentleness, patience, and bearing one another in love. All of which happens for the sake of unity in the Spirit (4:1-14). This is the sweeping movement of Christ in his descent (below for the sake of those who have already died) and ascent (above for the sake of the whole of the world in time), demonstrating the unifying work the author has declared the spiritual war to be both for and about. (4:9-10)

The Powers of Sin and Death have been defeated and the mystery of who we are In Christ revealed “So that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every whim of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (4:14), but rather freed to speak the “truth in love”. 4:17 then moves to speak to the particular-ness of what the gentiles are being pulled out of, contrasting the life in Ephesus as Gentiles with the new reality of their adoption, urging them to put away “that manner of life” so that opportunity is not given to the devil to “divide” them against “one another” (4:28). Instead, the author urges, walk in love (Chapter 5), being imitators of God in his love (5:1). There is something important and necessary that happens here, underscoring the idea that the defeating of the Powers of Sin and Death precedes us. In their status as adopted sons being “revealed” to them, what also gets revealed is the Darkness (the Powers) that once held them in bondage. There is a deep interconnectedness in the Book of Ephesian’s understanding of spiritual war and the practical outflow of its salvation (Christ defeating the Powers) in our midst and in our stories. This is the grand narrative to which we all already belong, Jew and Gentile. 

Be Imitators of God: Discovering our Identity as Adopted Sons and Daughters
Here we arrive at a puzzling inclusion to the Ephesians narrative. Bringing in the Hellenistic household code, the author uses this as a way of applying this idea of our adopted identity into the particulars of its structure (5:22). Adoption is the framework for this series of “servant” examples, from child, to parent, to husband/wife, to slaves, emphasizing that in the defeating of the Darkness there is no partiality in the Gospel’s reach (6:9). The unity that Christ is working towards is found in imitating God’s work which we find on the Cross, which is where we are to frame the idea of submission which the author pulls out of the household code in a reimagining of what was a power structure.

Three important distinctions have helped me make some sense of what the author is doing in this section. First, what the author calls us towards (unity) is generalized (for all) using a particular framework (the household code). It is reaching into the language of that world to tell us something about our identity as adopted children of God.  Secondly, there is a metaphorical aspect that we find in its use of the household structure (marriage, slave and master, parent and child) that the author is applying directly to the building of the collective (spiritual houses), which is the Church. Lastly, this must be understood in the nature of God’s work on the Cross. The Cross is the particular expression of the larger narrative in which we find the great spiritual war working to divide and to heal both Christ and Body.

It is through these three things that we can understand the word “submission”. Submission is what sets Christ under the Powers of Sin and Death that held us bondage. It is a lowering of one self for the sake of raising up another (symbolically captured in Ephesians in the descent and ascension). It is sweeping and indiscriminate in nature, interested in unity rather than distinction. Most important to Ephesians though, our unity is our shared identity. Adopted Sons and Daughters, this is what sets us in relationship to God for the sake of one another (the world). Submission gives up Power so that the Power that holds us bondage, holds us divided, can be declared defeated. The author pulls from the context of their audience (those in Ephesus and living within the household code) not to elevate the code as conduct, but to give us a framework through which to understand the nature of the mystery revealed.

This call to submission, to unity, is then set directly back into the larger narrative of the angels and the Powers and the larger spiritual reality, applying the worthy manner of which we are to walk because of our adoption as children of God (Chapter 4) to a picture of spiritual armor (the Armor of God 6:11). In ending the book with this, the author urges its readers to remember that the war that wages is a spiritual one. In the magic and spirits and mysticism of Ephesus, God is revealing the grand narrative of the Christian story, one in which we understand both what is at stake and what has already been won. This is the “mystery of the Gospel” that the author proclaims to us for the sake of the spiritual forces. This is the grand claim that we declare back to the Powers of Sin by way of this armor- that we are a child of God. This action is both proactive (laying claim to) and declarative (the war has already been won). It is resistant (resisting the division and disunity of the evil one) and accomplishing (freeing us to live into our reality as adopted sons and daughters). It is participatory (we reveal the mystery to the Powers) and receiving (the mystery of who we already are).

I think the dual nature of this armor is important and necessary for understanding the book of Ephesians in all its lofty language and confusion, because otherwise we are left, as the Ephesians were, living in bondage to the Powers. We will tend to interpret the word “belief” in transactional ways, leading us to see the battle as one we must win in order to find our “identity”. The hopeful nature of this spiritual reality, this grand narrative, is that we are no longer under the Power of Darkness, the Power of Sin and Death. It is about the truth of the unveiling, the revealing of this great mystery, with “His Will” uniting all things in Christ who defeated the Powers of Sin and Death on the Cross. It is, above all else, an invitation to see, to see who we already are- adopted sons and daughters of God. Not in fear, but in boldness. And in seeing we are able to declare to the spiritual forces that they have already been defeated, and declare to the world that the light is, in fact, already shining.

Prevalent in the whole of the New Testament writings is the presence of Gnostic teaching. Gnostic teaching simply has to do with the way in which we receive, project, and participate in spiritual “knowledge”. One of the key markers of Gnosticism, particularly in relationship to Christianity, is the idea of division. The self is divided over against itself (material and spiritual, human and divine) as is Christ (in being either man or God, material or divine).

Of concern to Paul is that a Christ divided leads to division within the fellowship of believers (and being divided against oneself leads to a Christ divided), which limits the work of God in the world. This is why we find Paul so “astonished” in the letter to the Galatians (1:1), spending much of his time in what is one of his most frustrated letters speaking to this division and calling for a unified body. For Paul, “to walk by the spirit (5:25)” is to not be “conceited” or “provoking to division” when it comes to the knowledge of Christ’s saving work and our belonging to it.

“For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.” (6:15)

Of primary concern to Paul is the relationship between God’s saving work and the salvation of the gentiles. In Galatians, this false teaching (circumcision only, or the Law over Christ) is pushing against the Gospel movement and using circumcision (the Law) to divide the Gospel and the body of believers against itself. To underscore this, Paul lays out a simple and concise argument in the early part of his letter to suggest what it means to be a slave and what it means to be free as a “new” creation.

Slave to Free, Free to Slave: A House Divided
Establishing the Gospel as a “gift” (1:12) through which he was “set apart (Paul’s witness) before he was “born” (1:15) and “called by grace” to live into this new creation, this is then proclaimed as Paul’s witness through which he moved from being a slave (under the law of circumcision) to being free (in Christ). The issue of a divided Gospel where circumcision (the Law) stands over Christ is that the pattern of Paul’s witness in this understanding is then reversed, leading him, them and us back into slavery. 

Paul reveals the hypocrisy of living in the Darkness (slavery) while also claiming the light as theirs rather than as a light for the world. This leads him towards the question of “justification” by faith in Christ, not by works of the law (2:6). If, he suggests, I try to live otherwise (by works), of which our adherence to the Law does, it only proves me to be a sinner (3:18) and leaves me enslaved in the darkness. If we could “build on (our) own” (the picture of the spiritual house that we find 1st and 2nd Peter), we would have no need for Christ. This becomes the central force of the division Paul sees between Law and Gospel. A Gospel divided has no power to move us from the darkness to the light. I think this is why that seemingly casual line in 2:10, which admonishes them to “remember the poor” in this great reversal from free to slave, is so important. It is here that we find a world in need of the same freedom we proclaim for ourselves, and it is in seeing his own poverty that Paul’s witness is able to proclaim to an impoverished world that he has moved from slavery to freedom, and thus they can stand in the light as well. This is the great proclamation.

Paul then moves to anchor this slave-free movement in a wonderful exposition of the Jewish narrative to which circumcision belongs. Paul reminds them of Abraham and of their connection to him and the larger story of God. (3:6) This, he insists, was what was preached by the “Spirit of Jesus (the “Scripture” or stories that hold Abraham in view in their tradition) all along- an “Abrahamic” covenant for the world (3:9). And the way this happens is through Christ, whom elsewhere is understood to have been there “from the beginning” (in the blessing of Abraham for all nations and for our sake 3:14). And then in a brilliant reimagining, Paul sees the work of Christ in the offspring of Hagar and Sarah, where he sees the image of two children divided and eventually emerging in Christ as one offspring united. In this sense, Law (circumcision, or that which divides us) is in service to the Abrahamic covenant (of God for the world), which prefigures Christ (3:15-18). 

Once again, “the Scripture” is the Jewish story to which they belong, in which we find the Law under which everything is imprisoned under the Powers of Sin and Death (3:22). This is what Paul wants to underscore when he describes the guardians (before Christ) as the “law” given through “intermediaries”. The reason for the Law was to hold us in bondage to the Powers of Sin and Death so that “Christ” could heal the division that the Law creates. The declaration of Paul’s witness says that we are no long under a “guardian” but rather we are “In Christ”, all sons and daughters of God, equal and not trapped in the distinctives that the law creates (slave, free, male/female, Jew/Greek) 3:28. All are under the law, all are redeemed in Christ who reveals God to us.

And yet, the source of Paul’s frustration is that they (his readers) want to turn back to the world of the law. Yet “for freedom Christ has set us free 5:1”, so why do we long for this great reversal from free to slave? The desires of the flesh that appear to long for this slavery (to the Law) reveals the sin of oppression and division, while the desires of the Spirit (Christ) stand opposed to this division “in love” 5:16-24. Which is precisely where faith, working through “love”, can lead us to righteousness (5:6). This is how God heals our division and makes us (and this world) righteous (to make right), is through one covenant, one offpsring, and one word (love) undivided against itself. (5:13). Therefore, to walk by the spirit, the same spirit that informed Abraham (5:25) is to not be conceited or provoking to division. Rather, move towards love, in which the law that revealed our need for Christ calls us towards “bear one anothers burdens.” (6:2)

Paul’s imagining of the New Creation (6:15) comes in light of a final admonishing to “Do good to everyone, but especially to those of the household of faith.” (6:10). So much of the New Testament writings speak to the importance of a house united, a house that is not divided. This is the relevance of the “spiritual building” in which Christ is the cornerstone, a truth that pulls us out of those spaces which attempt to elevate law above our witness to God’s story in Christ, which is the work that Christ is doing in the world. Although we might think that we are speaking of freedom, we are in fact taking the witness of Christ and setting it back into slavery to that which already set us in bondage to the Darkness. We create distinctions that hide the light of Christ (God) for the world, the same God that Abraham bore witness to in his obedience. This is why fellowship is such a key theme in so many of the New Testament writings. A fellowship divided cannot bear a light to the impoverished, the oppressed, the hurting, the struggling, the needy. A God who is not for the gentiles cannot reach out to all the nations of the world as His Covenant declares. And the way to unity In Christ is through love, the same love that God lavished on Paul and which brought him from slavery to freedom.

 

Mercy “caused” us to be born again through resurrection (1:3). Born again into an inheritance (imperishable, undefiled, unfading), and “kept in heaven for you” (1:5), guarded and ready to be revealed.
1 Peter 1:1-5

This is the same powerful language of adoption that we find in so much of Paul’s own writings, and fleshed out here in the light of Peter’s own experience with the living Christ (being an eye witness of Christ’s Resurrection victory of the Powers of Darkness 2 Peter 1:16-19). I have long loved the picture that this verse in the letter of 1 Peter creates of our inheritance being “kept” in Heaven. It evokes the idea of Jesus praying for us (Hebrews 7:25; Romans 8:24) as he “guards” the truth of our identity in this already-not yet reality that we find ourself within. It’s hopeful, although in a slightly different way for me than the heavily modern “Calvinist” approaches that have held it hostage (within systematic theologies).  For me it evokes this wonderful notion that within our doubts, our questions, our wondering and our struggles, there is something to anticipate, something that is and will be revealed to us in its fullness. 

1 Peter in Context and Concern
1 Peter is addressed to dispersed Christians in Asia-Minor to places immersed in Greco-Roman culture. Further though, it is addressed to “Gentile” Christians (“elect exiles”) as a means of establishing the truth of their (our) adoption from within the grander narrative of God’s story. Christ’s saving work in their lives becomes a witness to the Spirit of Christ which was present “in the beginning” with the “prophets” (1:11), already bearing witness to God’s work in the Cross within the world of the Gentile believers. This is reminiscent of 1 John’s declarative opening statement, “in the beginning”, an understanding Peter uses to bring us back to Christ as the “living stone” (1 Peter 2:4).

These two ideas form the focus and interest of 1st and 2nd Peter, locating Christ’s saving work in the life of the world through the lives of these Gentile believers, and through their lives then building a case for adoption as a working metaphor for how salvation must work.

Adoption and God’s Forming Work 
As we move through the first chapter of 1st Peter, having established that God’s saving work is indeed alive and true in the lives of the Gentile Believers (mercy caused them to be “born again” 1:3), Peter turns his attention to then bearing this witness out over and against their current reality.

Here we find the first of a series of metaphorical depictions of a “forming” faith, that same faith that has not yet been fully revealed and which remains bound in our wonderings and our questions. Faith here is like “gold” that is being formed out of the “testing” ground that is our experiences within the not yet reality of this world. Our experiences point us to a greater hope. This idea is declarative rather than prodding. It is a hopeful precedent, that although this world throws our faith into question, this faith endures on our behalf. There is also a secondary part to this declaration, in that while we do not yet see (our redemption) clearly, our experiences in the here and now, amidst the Darkness of this world, can begin to reveal this faith (hope) to us in very real ways. This is what it means to be “faithful.”

This is why Peter can move to say “therefore” (because of this) set your hope on these small graces by conducting yourselves in the Way of your salvation. It is all about seeing this bigger picture of our faith being “kept” for a time in which this world, in all of its darkness, struggle and injustice, will once again be made right.

For Peter, the hope of this grace comes from a “Father” (anchored in this adoption language) who “judges impartially”. The point of this is both positive (reforming) and clear (practical) in how it aims to lift up God’s saving work within the life of the “gentiles”. And it has a connective and establishing feature that is moving God’s saving work further and further out into the world. “Because” the Father judges impartially (equally), they can then live out their faith with (appropriate) “fear” (freedom) (1:17), and in living this out bear the knowledge of Christ’s saving work (making what is wrong right) both in their lives and in the world.

This is similar to the argument about knowledge that we find in 1 John, where knowledge is a gift, not something that is earned. Knowledge is an outflow of our conduct, but it is knowledge of a truth that precedes our conduct. And equally so for Peter (as it is for John), this knowledge stands on the simple truth that without Christ all we have to stand on in our struggle, in the injustice and partiality of this world, is the reigning witness of Darkness and Death. This is why, as Peter comes back to in 1:21, Christ was present at the beginning in the declaration of the Prophets making us (out of mercy) “born again” (adopted) as children of God. This is the hope of a world being made new.

Adopted in and for the Spirit of Love
It is this same spirit that then establishes that the point of this attention to “conduct” is so that their “souls” can be purified for the sake of “love” (1:22), which becomes the reigning and affirmative picture that carries us through the remaining chapters. “So then”, as chapter 2 begins, “because” of this love (Peter likes these connective pictures and arguments), and for the sake of this love, put away all manners of conduct which are  not loving (malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, slander), all of which are the enemies of fellowship (which he shares with the letters of John as the thing that bears witness to to the light and life of the world, Christ).

Adoption in The Metaphor of Mother and Child, Christ as the Living Stone, and the Nature of God’s Love 
Here we now get the second metaphor for the working out of their adoption (God’s saving work), moving from the picture of forming gold to the picture of a child weaning on its mother’s milk (2:1-3). This metaphor takes the forming of the gold and sets it into an intimate picture of what it means to be a “child of God” in relationship to God. What a wonderful, and richly feminine, picture, one that will become important for unpacking chapter 3.

The intimacy of this metaphor opens us up to one of the most recognizable passages in 1 Peter, mother and child being set within the larger metaphor of a “spiritual house” (2:4). The mother translates through the “living stone”, which opens up this picture of God’s saving work in the light of this reigning already-not yet reality even wider. What will be revealed to us, what is being “kept”, is our lives as a “spiritual house”, one built by the “living stone” (Christ).

This is so massively important for moving into chapter 3 as good readers of scripture, those notorious verses that have been used to underscore the paradigm through which we arrive at this all to prevalent male-female divide (with the male as the head of the house and the wife in submission). In the analogy of the living stone, Christ is established in His work on the Cross, the means through which he is building this “house” that is our salvation (His saving work). With this as the central paradigm through which we are to see both God’s “adoption” and God’s adoption of the “Gentiles”, this then reaches out into the picture of the Christian life as a witness to God’s saving work as one that is anchored in faith, hope and love. This is what the language of the “living stone” as a stumbling block is meant to evoke, is the upside down nature of the Cross as one that calls us in its mercy towards a life of servanthood rather than distinction. This is the impartiality language at play and in context.

The reason the living stone is a stumbling block is because of the way it extends Christ’s salvation out into the world, without distinction and without regard for one’s conduct as the source of our saving work. Set within this Jewish-Gentile context, the election of the Gentile Believers and the declaration of them as a ‘chosen race” (distinct Jewish language) is paired with the declaration that God’s light is bearing witness in them for the sake of the world. This carries a sweeping force that works to dismantle their (and our) expectations, thus setting them apart, according to the virtues of the Cross (faith, hope, and love) in ways that stand antithetical to the world (in its Greco-Roman context and within the honor-shame systems that they are being pulled out of in their adoption).

Adoption and Servanthood
It is from this perspective that we can then understand the motivation behind the following verses and chapters, beginning with the call to be “subject to every human institution”, so that “by doing good you should put to silence” ignorance (2:15). Live as “free” people (in Christ), not using their adoption as a cover up for evil (matters with are antithetical to fellowship), but rather be “servants” (2:16-17).

The word servant feels like an affront to our senses of course, and yet this is the work of Christ on the Cross. It feels backwards, its challenging, it is even offensive. It’s “foolishness” when set in the ways of the world. This is even the case when seeing it through our modern lens (maybe even more so). The way to liberate oppression, be it racism, feminism, or any number of social issues, is not found in the Way of the servant, but rather in the raising of our rights as a means of counteracting discrimination (which follows in line with the indiscriminate judge that we find in Peter). And yet, the point Peter continues to make here is that if we see freedom exclusively in this light, a light that holds a shared dependence on the idea of the indiscriminate judge (equality), we will inevitably find ourselves bound to the same kind of honor-shame systems that governed the Greco-Roman world, one based on the aquisition of our rights as the way to liberation and one raises up new discriminatory lines in its place. Rather, the Way of Christ is one in which we are called to give up our rights for the sake of the world. We lower ourselves so that others might be raised up. We give of ourselves so that others can have. This is different than the raising up of our (equal) rights for sake of liberation. It is the only way we can truly arrive at a place that is indiscriminate in nature..

For the Gentiles to be considered equal to the Jews, this was not about declaring themselves to hold equal rights and deserving of God’s saving work. If it depended on this they would already be declared condemned by the nature of the Jewish inheritance under the “law”. Not only would they be condemned by it, but they would be left with a salvation that must, by nature, raise them above the world in which they exist as well, limiting the sweeping force of God’s saving work. What Christ does is pull us out of this narrative and set us into the light of the Cross as our foundational image, our building force.

Human Institutions, Wives and Submissiom: The Real Work of Redemption

Peter’s call to serve “human institutions” then flows out into the call of wives to serve their husbands, and the call of husbands to honor their wives. The flow of this verse is personal rather than descriptive. We see it pulling in the direction of 3:7, framed by the idea that wives are “heirs with you” (equal), and pushed by the narrative interest that precedes it, the case that Peter has been building (out of the grace and freedom found in the indiscriminate judge). The motivation for this personal admonition is at once particular (this is their reality and the reality of the world they lived in, entrenched in Patriarchal society and Greco-Roman ideals), and similtaneously forming (that this world is being made right). It is both judging (what is wrong) and saving (what is being made right), with the concern for the particular being the unity of Christ (fellowship) wrapped up in love as its guiding nature. It gives emphasis to the idea that we do not “repay evil with evil”, rather we work to demonstrate the Way of Christ as the greater way (that of the humble servant). It is by living into this “conduct” that Christ then becomes revealed as a light for the world, the thing that can defeat the Powers of Sin and Death (all the manners of injustice and partiality) and restore life to our particular contexts.

To be clear, this admonition does not come as an endorsement of the abuses these verses have led to in many Christian circles. In context, I believe these verses are concerned with drawing out the dangers of inequality. It carries a concern for the resistance of these worldly “institutions.” To be set apart from it. But if is a resistance that sees outwardly regardless of our position, one shaped by the power of witness over restitution, and one that desires to bring freedom and change from within. One that moves forward in the grace of God as the indiscriminate judge. It is a kind of resistance that takes a formative position with an outward focus, one that sees our adoption (the claim that we are free and that our situation is being made right) as a freedom “for the world:. Its meant to give hope in hopeless and oppressive situations, not to leave us stuck in it or willingly submitted to it. This is what it is for our kept salvation to breathe into our particulars, whatever that might be.

This all becomes even more poignant in Peters setting of Christ’s work on the Cross into the wider picture that lays claim to the salvation of the Gentiles. Peterson says that on the Cross Christ preached to the “spirits in prison”, those who were judged in the flesh in the days of Noah, so that they might find life in the Spirit. It sees the flood narrative in the light of “baptism”, which is the lens through which the metaphors of the gold, the mothers milk are then placed as an appeal, not of “the removal of dirt” but as a declaration of who we already are in Christ, a declaration which comes in the same spirit that formed the prophetic ministry of old. This is Christ’s work of righteousness (one who is not under the Power of Sin and Death) for the unrighteous (the created world which is under the Power of Sin and Death). (3:18)

Good Conduct and A Witness to the Light, and the Knowlege that Forms Us

Therefore, Peter exhorts using the same connective language at the start of chapter 4, “because” of this we are to think in a ‘similar way” as a servant, for what is not right does not determine our movement from death to life. What is yet to be revealed does. This is what our conduct bears witness to, otherwise why suffer the humiliation of a servant for the sake of the world if we are simply going to align ourselves with all manners of conduct that is antithetical to this fellowship? When we do so (live opposed to the proclamation that we have been made new) we are simply demonstrating that the world is still under the power of Sin and Death (the adversary being the Devil 5:8). The point of the (impartial) judgment of the household of God is so that the world may find righteousness (what is wrong being made right) 4:17,18, see that the Powers of Sin and Death have been defeated and that this world has been placed under the light and in life. Therefore “entrust your souls to a faithful creator while doing good” (conduct), trusting that God is restoring, confirming, strengthening and establishing us as “spiritual houses” in order to bear witness to the light (Christ).

This is the nature of the knowledge that Peter understands in his second letter. What we know in Christ is the work that God is doing through the “living stone”, brick by brick, the promise being that “we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” (2 Peter 3:13) Therefore, patience is required. Patience, as Peter’s first letter has established, is necessary (2 Peter 3:9). Indeed, patience is counted “as” salvation as we entrust the process to God. But we do so with God’s sweeping view in mind. What is happening to the whole of creation is what is happening to the gold that describes our own sanctifying work (3:10). And the Cross gives us a way into the world according to the impartial judge, not by way of our rights but by way of the servant. This is how the light shines in the face of Evil.

In the meantime, this knowledge affords us Power over Sin and Death, over the Darkness. The great supplementation phrase here essentially declares this- faith leads to virtue, leads to knowledge, leads to self control, leads to steadfastness, leads to godliness, leads to fellowship, leads to love, with love ultimately depending on the presence of faith for its expression in “fellowship” with one another.

By entering into this flow, the flow of God’s movement from Heaven to Earth that has been apparent not only from the time of the Prophets to Christ but through all of history, we bear witness to the light of Christ, and we are also reminded of this great proclamation ourselves. What we see in the stories of the angels, noah, sodom, and all of the ancient narrative that upholds the Jewish narrative through which God has been seen making Himself known to the world, is being made right. This is the truth that the Gentiles hold, and it is the truth that we can still lay claim to today as adopted sons and daughters of God.

One thing we know about the letters of John with a fair degree of certainty is that someone named John wrote them. Yes, this sounds obvious and even a bit contrived. It is called 1st, 2nd and 3rd John after all.

But bear with me for a moment, because this is not necessarily the case when it comes to a number of the New Testament writings. Names can be ambiguous, at times applied post-script, and often arrive with varying degrees of attachment and detachment from the proposed author in question (could be a product of one’s followers, for example).

The absence of certainty in authorship can make it somewhat harder to place the writing in its proper context. Thus, there is some significance to saying that good evidence seems to suggest that the letter of John was written by a person named John, and that what we have are the straightforward, uncomplicated words of a single individual. The authorship makes it easier to find and unearth that context.

This confidence in authorship can also help us see these letters as the product of a Church leader (“elder statesman”) who was part of a movement away from Jerusalem (before it’s destruction) towards ministry somewhere around Ephesus, which can easily (then) connect us with the teachings of Paul and the book of Revelation that connect to this area.

Finally, understanding the context for the letters of John can help us in unpacking its central themes- schism (division within the Church), fellowship (with fellow believers), love (as the great forming and liberating force), and knowledge (which connects us to encroaching “gnosticism” as the source of the schism). For John, these four things come together as a way of speaking to the “confidence” we can have in Christs’ work on the cross to move us from darkness to light, death to life.

Knowledge, Gnosticism, and John’s Connection to Paul
One of the things you will notice about the letter of 1 John (and the subsequent 2 letters) is the prominence of this word, knowledge. The Greek word for knowledge is “gnosis”, out of which we get the word “gnosticism”, and is the mostly likely word John would have had in mind when writing his letters. Before diving into the letter itself, I thought what might be helpful is touching briefly on Fleming Rutledge’s (since I just finished reading her book, The Crucifixion: Making Sense of the Death of Jesus) description of gnosticism, and gnostic teaching, as the great division that touched the New Testament world as it fleshed out its understanding of Christ and the Cross. This can help us as readers to make sense of the division John is speaking to in more specific ways as he admonishes us towards greater “fellowship” within the Church.

Fleming writes, “Gnosticism in its numerous and various forms has always been far and away the most pervasive and popular rival to Christianity- particularly in connection to the theologia crucis (theology of the Cross). This was so in the New Testament times, and remains so today.” (Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding Jesus’ Death, p45)

She goes on to say, “All the various forms of gnosticism are grounded in the belief that privileged spiritual knowledge is the way of salvation.” They are “mystery-mongers”. They “claim to know things that other people don’t know.”

Now here is what it interesting for the purposes of engaging the Letters of 1st, 2nd and 3rd John. Rutledge, who spends a good deal of time with Paul in her book (the Pauline writings reflects our earliest access to the ministry of Jesus) quotes from his letter to the Corinthians in underscoring the problem of gnosticism in the New Testament world. Paul “hopes to win them (the fellowship of believers) back to his message of God’s subversive plan to make foolish the wisdom of the world“, writing that “Knowledge (gnosis) puffs up, but love builds up.” and “If one loves God, one is known by him” (1 Cor. 8:1-13), which she recognizes “flips our focus from our knowledge of God to God’s knowledge of us.”

If one keeps this in mind when reading the letters of John, it would be impossible then not to see a deep and unifying connection between the teachings of Paul, who was equally concerned with knowledge (gnosticism) and the admonitions of John. Knowledge, fellowship, and love take precedence here in John’s first letter, with a deep desire to reframe “knowledge” as a given confidence rather than an earned confidence.

Light and Dark, Death and Life
As John opens his letter we encounter very early on some of the dominant language that will encompass his focus on knowledge, love, fellowship and schism- these competing forces of light and dark, death and life (1:5). If you notice the letter’s opening (That which was from the beginning…), you will begin to understand why scholarship has tended to associate these letters with the assumed Gospel writer of the same name. The language of light and dark and death and life as competing forces is a shared distinctive, with the Gospel of John leading us back to the beginning of “creation” and the letter of John leading us back to “Christ” as the beginning (a word that connects 1John 1:1 with 3:11, a powerful exposition of the Cain and Able story that then connects light and dark to death and life (3:11-15), allowing him to locate Sin within this narrative idea as the competing Powers that lead us towards schism or fellowship).

Further underscoring the picture of these competing forces, in Chapter one John sets out a working argument that is going to carry us through all three of his letters- the lie and the truth, with the idea being that if we have fellowship with one another we then have fellowship with Christ. This is why the Darkness is so interested in separating us from one another, because without Christ all we have is Death. This is also why 1:6 then declares that “God is light”, the competing Power to the darkness. And the schism begins with understanding the relationship between the lie and the truth that, by their very nature sets us under either darkness or light (life or death).

The lie is this- if we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie… (1:6).
The truth is this- if we walk in the light, as he is the light, we have FELLOWSHIP with one another and (thus) the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. (1:7)

So here we have these dueling pictures- walking in the light or walking in the dark, with fellowship (and thus schism) the means or the maker through which we can know whether we are standing in the light or in the dark.

Sounds simple and clear enough.

Except John doesn’t stop there. In 1:8-10 we find a curious flip from the lie in 1:6, with John now connecting the schism to Sin, further expounding on the notion of the Power of the lie by suggesting that “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1:9) Further yet, “if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us (the word being Christ).”

Thus begins this tension filled ride through Johns letter. If we walk in the darkness (Sin) and say we are in the light (Christ), we lie. And yet, if we also say we have no sin (Darkness), we lie and the light (Christ) is not in us. THANKS A LOT JOHN!!

I mentioned that connective piece between 1:1 and 3:11 earlier in this post (“from the beginning”). It is worthwhile revisiting the lead up to that bookmark (if you will) between passage, as it underscores this tension that John creates (intentionally so, I believe).

1 John 3:6-10 English Standard Version (ESV)
6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. ⁷ Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. ⁸ Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. ⁹ No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. ¹⁰ By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.”

Working our way backwards through this verse, we find that once again that fellowship is the means by which righteousness (which shares a root meaning and source word with “justification”, which is the idea of “making right what is wrong”) is achieved, and thus becomes that which distinguishes between the lie and the truth. The passage then (working backwards) positions us within the larger and necessary narrative to which Sin belongs- the works of the devil. This is why Christ came and died, setting up the declaration “from the beginning” as a proclamation. 

The Proclamation of Our Confidence in Christ
This phrase, “from the beginning” is what opens us up in 3:11 to John’s proclamation of what is, as he wants to show what our CONFIDENCE is. On the Cross Christ defeated the Power of Sin and Death, the defining marks of the Darkness. In this sense, John’s declaration, and the way he gives us into the tension he creates (intentionally) is not by works but through faith. Sin is more accurately understood here as a state of being rather than a moral action.

Another way to say this would be to ask, what do we have if we live without fellowship- death and darkness. That is what remains. What do we have if we live in fellowship? Light and life. Because that is what Christ has given to us in defeating the Devil (the Powers of Sin and Death). This is the confidence that we can have over and against the tension that John creates. “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” (3:16) This is similar to what John is saying in 1:9 “If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This confession comes with the confidence of God’s faithfulness to make things right both within us and in the world.

But the tension carries another notable force, because our confession also reminds us that God’s faithfulness rests on the idea that we, all of us, are under the Power of Sin and Death. This is why the Cross carries power to heal the divide that exists between Light and Dark, Life and Death. In 1 John 2:1-2, John says that God, in Christ, is for all. The whole world. This effectively erases the line between the godly and ungodly from which the above tension forms, thus affording us the confidence that comes in Christ. “By this we may know that we are in him, whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way he walked.” (2:6).

Here we come back to that idea of Sin as a state of being rather than an action. The truth that Christ has defeated the Power of Sin and Death precedes us, it is not contingent on whether we are walking in the light or the dark. The crux of John’s argument in the first three chapters (and the whole of the book) is to expose this truth as parallel to the confidence we have and the confidence we gain through “fellowship”. We have confidence through fellowship because Christ has brought light and life to the whole world. “The Darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining”, even if we can’t yet see it clearly. (2:9) This is the grand proclamation. We are no longer under the Power of Sin and Death (2:13), and for this reason we can have fellowship with one another. It is for this reason we can have confidence, and thus know (leading to a series of confidence sayings in 2:12-14 that connect around the phrase “you know”) that we have hope. Our hope comes because although the world passes away, Jesus is forever (2:15), therefore to love the world is to stand in Darkness without hope.

A Different Kind of Knowledge
In 2:18, John talks about the schism that gnosticism has created (which most notably is a schism it sees in Christ Himself), bringing it back to the competing lie-truth paradigm of chapter 1. He brings to our awareness these competing forms of knowledge for the purpose of proclaiming our confidence (hope) in his (Christs) righteousness (making right again, or in 3:3, the truth that what is not yet will be). “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called Children of God.” (3:1) And so we are a child of God. We have been adopted into God’s family and made to be foreigners in this world. This is what light and life does in the grand narrative that we see expressed in 3:1-10 (of the Powers of Death and Life).

At the same time John continues to bring this distinctive of being the children of God back into the idea of fellowship as that which marks us as in the dark or in the light. Righteousness=fellowship (3:10), with righteousness being fellowship that is expressed in love (3:11-24). Our confidence in Christ’s love (his fellowship with us, and thus his giving of life and light) emerges from our love for one another. This is the picture of freedom that John desires us to embrace. This is where the great tension that John has laid out really comes to fruition. “By this we shall know that w are of the truth and reassure our hearts before him. For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved…” (19-20)

Everything hinges on this statement. To arrive at 3:21, which gives us a picture of a heart standing uncondemned (in confidence) “by” our walking in the light, “by” believing in what Christ has done (3:23), we must go through verses 19,20.

And yet what John offers is a different kind of knowledge (confidence) than that of the gnostics. His is not a knowledge gained, it is a knowledge given. It is not knowledge that uplifts us, it is knowledge that uplifts others. It is not knowledge that sets one over the other, it is a knowledge that lowers us down for the sake of the other.

The Tension and the Resolution: The Fellowship of Love
Here is one of the challenges in reading John. We like things to be defined. We like hard and fast descriptions of what we must do to see ourselves in the light and to know that we are not in the darkness. This is what it is to be human. Johns working tension doesn’t allow us to do this. In fact, by trying to do this we are essentially setting ourselves under the darkness. The reason for Christ’s propitiation  (2:2; 4:10), an important word to understand in its usage since it often gets confused with “expiation” (One means to take from, to expirate, or “take” our sins, the other means to give to, to propriate, to give “for” or “to” us), is to give us life and light. And 1 John’s final chapter (5), which states that in Christ we have overcome the world (of Darkness and Death) as “children of God” so that we “may know” the truth of light and life, this becomes the key focus of the repeated word “commandment”, a word deeply tied to our notions of law, law keeping and works. Keep his commandments “for” (the given statement of propitiation) “everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world.” (5:4). The temptation here is to dial back on using this to help us solve that original tension. How do we know we are in the light or in the dark? By following His commandments. John stops us in our tracks by saying (but) “this is the victory that has overcome the world- our faith” (5:4), the belief that “Jesus is the Son of God”, not our following of the commandment. The following of commandments acts as signpost to help us see this truth.

Love of others (fellowship)=Love of God (fellowship)=confidence (knowledge) becomes the reigning paradigm in 1 John 4 (4:7-21). Love is perfected in us (4:17) why? So that we can have confidence in love to reveal to us the light and life that holds us in its hands (no fear in love 4:18). This is the truth that the 3 witnesses of 5:6-12, Spirit, water, and blood, testify to and agree on (in fellowship). The truth is that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one (5:19), and for this reason we must find fellowship with one another in the witness of life and light through LOVE. Once again John is speaking of a repositioning rather than an action. Fellowship repositions us so that we can likewise bear witness to this knowledge, and this knowledge comes for the sake of reconciling the truth that the whole world, us included, stands in darkness.

From Tension to Tension: The Sin that Leads to Death
How fitting then that John both ends and begins his first letter by presenting us with a great source of tension. In one of the most difficult verses in the letter, following John’s exposition on love and fellowship in chapters 4 and 5, we encounter this verse. “If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask and God will give him life- to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death.”

Wait, what did you just say John? I thought we had deal with this!?
And maybe the main point here is that it is human nature to always be contention with this tension. That is what Jesus is doing in the Cross, is working out this tension in our lives.

So after all this talk about our confidence, we get this weird and seemingly convoluted statement that once again seems to suggest our “actions” as the determining factor for being either in the darkness or the light, of incurring death or life. It’s a verse that has had both scholars and laypeople, Christians and non-Christians puzzled for centuries. Everyone wants to know (surprise, surprise), what is this sin that leads to death!?

I think seeing Johns letter in context though can help make some sense out of this phrase, especially if we set it within the same tension that John raises earlier. First, the most important thing to recognize is John’s use of the word “Sin”, which evokes the Greek sense (same as Paul) of Powers (of Sin and Death) rather than moral action. In this sense, death is a reality. It is a state. Without Christ it is what we are left with.

Second, the point of this verse is directly interested in John’s discussion of schism, fellowship, knowledge (confidence) and love which precedes it. If we see this verse through this lens we can also then see it in the light of the “fellowship of believers” to whom John is speaking to. Here he is again distinguishing in an affirmative and life giving way the difference between the truth and the lie. This is why he (I think) accompanies this verse with the idea of praying for (sins that don’t lead to death) and not praying for (sins that do lead to death). The emphasis here is on the sin of fellowship (or schism) that has followed John’s letter throughout. Therefore, it only stands to bear that “all wrongdoing” is capital letter Sin (The Powers of Sin and Death) which John has already established we all, the whole world, are under, but that there is a functioning community (children of God)  who are still “with sin” (the lack of fellowship) that do operate within (or an awareness of) the Light and life (the Power of the Christ).

The point of the verse then becomes this. If the proclamation that Christ has defeated the Powers of Sin and Death is not true, as the schism continues to bear witness to, prayer has no power because all we then have is death and darkness. If it is true, then prayer has power to move us from sin (lack of fellowship) to fellowship (love).

This is why John comes immediately back to this statement as a way of underlining this verse. “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” (But) The son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true.” (5:19-10) Christ is for all, all are under the Power of Sin and Death (and thus located as sinners), and the reason for our fellowship (with one another, and therefore Christ) is to bear witness of His work (the defeating of the Powers of Darkness) to the world.

A powerful admonition indeed.

 

 

 

One of the most important sections of scripture for me growing up, and my favorite letter, was Philippians 2:1-11:

Christ’s Example of Humility
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

There was always something so extremely compelling to me and hard to grasp about Christ’s approach to humility. It felt displaced, counter-intuitive, and often less than rational when placed within or outside of our religious circles.

And yet it is also the place where I found a good deal of hope. The call to find encouragement in humility is formed against the opening admonition of 1:7-8, where Paul speaks of his audience as “partakers with me of grace” from both a position of “imprisonment” and “proclamation”. And what is the proclamation? The proclamation is Christ, and that in Him a “good work in you will” be brought to “completion at the Day of Christ.” (1:6). Paul’s prayer then is that this good work is expressed in a love (vs.9) that grows, and grows, and grows with “knowledge and discernment” of the work Christ is doing within us. And what is this work? The work is the “fruit of righteousness” (vs 11), a term that is synonymous with the word “justification” in that it speaks of what is still yet incomplete will be “made right” and “just”.

What Paul then exudes in 1:12-19 is that in our hopelessness we can know the hope that is Christ’s work, a work being driven by “love” (1:16) and centred around the proclamation of Christ as the one who is making what is wrong right.

The problem that Paul points out is the ways in which some are proclaiming this work in their lives, not out of humility but out of “envy” and “rivalry”. To live is Christ and to die is to “gain” Christ. And yet as we live, we live for the love of others. (1:24), the kind of love that finds “one mind, one spirit, standing side by side” in the great hope of our Proclamation. This is what positions this love between the saving work (of Christ) and the destructive work (of the Power of Sin and Death), the two competing agencies that we are positioned within (1:28). Our hope is that while things are not yet complete, Christ is at work making it right.

Which then unfolds in this grand statement about HUMILITY as the great virtue that can uphold us in this hope, recognizing that in Christ the destructive Power of Sin and Death no longer hold us in bondage. The grand statement is that this work is complete even as it is also being brought to completion within us. And so because of this great proclamation, embrace humility as the freeing force that it can be in our lives. “Count others more significant than yourselves and “look not to your own interests” because this is the “mind of Christ.” This is what He was doing on the Cross. “He made himself nothing” so that “every knee” and “every name” in heaven and on earth and under the earth (the full sweep of creation being restored) can proclaim Christ’s work. In his death, death becomes no more.

This is the light that shines as we “work out this salvation” in the already-not yet reality that is Christ’s work in us and for us. (2:12-13). This is why we can proclaim that we do not “run in vain” (2:16). This is the “word of life”. To see ourselves as “blameless and innocent” is to place ourselves, as Jesus did, within the brokenness of others so that others can see Jesus bringing that brokenness to completion in them. To love is to see without precondition a world that is equally in bondage to the Powers of Sin and Death and a world equally freed by the work of Christ. This is why Paul says in 3:7, “whatever I gained” from the hope I once put in the flesh (as a Jewish man under God), is “counted as loss” in knowing the hope of Christ, a “resurrection hope” through which the Power of Sin and Death that the law makes known no longer has power over the life that we have been given. This is where our hope is repositioned away from the works of the law and towards the works of Christ, a repositioning that not only moves us away from exclusive ideas of God’s righteousness (that is, who is made right and how one is made right) and sets us in line with one another as equal participants of this (grace), but one that calls us to give up this notion of equality for the sake of the righteousness (being made right) of others. This is the way hope is expressed and made known in the realm of God’s creation.

“Not that i have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”

This work, this hope, precedes us. This is why I found so much freedom in Philippians 2. This is why God’s work is built on the virtue of humility. Because of what Christs’ work proclaims we can begin to discover the work that Christ is doing within us and in the world. With this comes the firm declaration that without Christ the Powers of Sin and Death would still hold us bondage to its destructive and defeating force. Because of Christ we can proclaim that Sin and Death has been defeated and that we, all of us, are being transformed. This is the glorious truth that we are “making our own.” This is why we no longer need to be anxious, but “in everything by prayer and supplication (and) with thanksgiving” we can let our “requests be made known to God.” (4:6) This is the “peace” that hope brings. This is the “honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, worthy of praise” truth that Christ proclaims, and that we are called to proclaim in love to the world- what is wrong is being made right.

“There are no good and bad films, only good and bad Directors.
– Truffaut

The cinema is an invention without of a future – Louis Lumière

For most cinephiles (a French born term), Auteur Theory, or the idea of the Auteur, is likely a familiar term and idea, if not in definition than certainly within popular expression and application. To say that a Director is recognizable, distinctive, unique, artistic, all of these things are descriptives of an Auteur, which recognizes the Director as the “author” of a film. On a more complex level, taking from Notes on the Auteur Theory, which officially defined the term in 1963, “A Director must have an awareness of the craft, a distinguishable character, and this awareness and distinguishable character leads to interior meaning.”

There are many different entry points into a discussion of French Film. They essentially invented the visual artform, and have impacted and helped to shape the industry in a variety of ways over their long and impressive cinematic history. I wanted to begin with Auteur Theory though because of its relevance, not only to understanding the French New Wave, one of France’s most robust and recognizable movements, but France’s literary influence and the role that this literary foundation played in the development of the critic, which became integral to the development of film as an artform. These two things are important because they can help in understanding the character of French film and it’s interest in complex narrative arcs.

Theatrical, Literary Roots, and Shadows of the New Wave
One of the things that gaining a Global perspective of film history can help reveal (as I’ve been travelling around the world in 2020) is the deep connection between cinema and its theatrical and literary roots, with each Country’s emphasis on one or the other lending to the character and tradition of their film (and national) identity. Of course plenty of other things play into a Country’s cinematic identity, not the least of which is its socio-political backdrop. But understanding a Country’s storytelling tradition can say a lot about how these storytelling methods are able to capture and express that socio-political reality in ways that also advance and influence the cinematic artform as a whole.

And nothing came to define France more clearly and more deliberately than the French New Wave, an (unofficial) movement born from its development of the Auteur Theory.

What is most important about the idea of the Auteur, especially in understanding French Cinema, is the development of the idea of “personal authorship”. Francois Truffaut, a Director and Critic from the French New Wave, first published the “Auteur Theory” in the Cahiers du Cinema in 1954. You can read a wonderful essay on the development of the Auteur Theory here (https://www.elon.edu/u/academics/communications/journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/153/2017/06/01DavidTregdeEJFall13.pdf). Initially formed out of their close relationship with America and observing what America was doing, it then translated to, in more concrete theoretical ways, the art of French cinema as a working theory. Auteur Theory helped to develop the idea of form that would eventually come to define French Cinema against the competing American Cinematic Tradition, not only through its particular attention to form and style, but in the continued development and integration of new Directors/Creatives meant to create and recreate the form. 

The Auteur Theory is of course not without its own critics (although it was born out of the development of film criticism) and controversy. Whether its focus on Directors as the author of a film takes away from film as a multi-faceted and diverse artform made up of multiple artists and players is a worthy debate. But it certainly did change the face of the industry forever. Even today, we still retain a tendency to elevate the Director as the face of a movie, recognizing films based on their signature and presence.

This style (personal authorship) deconstructed Hollywood continuity, and gave a cheap and accessible way for filmmakers to employ a signature that allowed technique to comment on technique.

This idea of constantly reinventing oneself, or “technique commenting on technique” is contrasted with the traditionalism bred from the Hollywood system(s). This would lead French Film to pride itself on distinguishing between high forms of artistic expression, refusing to be bound to restrictive forms, but at the same time always remaining indebted to the literary influences that gave life to the grand French Tradition and identity.

A lesser known fact about the Auteur Theory (and German Cinematic History is subtle and sneaky in this way) is that it was actually an Austrian born, German language speaking Director named Max Reinhardt, with heavy roots in German Theatrical influence, who came up with the idea as far back as the early 1920’s, and even earlier. This is an interesting connection because German Cinema’s focus on the theatrical as a defining characteristic of German film becomes filtered in a particular way through France’s literary tradition. This is why we find language that evokes a “pen” and an “author” within the theory itself. What is known as mise-en-scene comes equally from observations of American tendency towards visual emphasis, but also from the idea of long form writing, emphasizing “long takes” and scenes that offer both depth of narrative and cinematic imagination. It evokes the idea of the “camera pen”, which essentially translates through the way a camera is placed and moves, thus heightening the cinematic form through externals (lighting,  long form writing (literary) into a visual “type” rather than relying on composition. In this sense, Directors become, as it has been often put, “metaphorical writers” with the screen as their page or “canvas”, something that was emphasized with the world’s first female Director (France’s Alice Guy), who created the idea of “film narrative”.

The Rise of the Film Critic And The French New Wave
The relationship between the film critic and the development of film as a constantly developing form that is able to then critique itself (thus always challenging static form) is a valuable concept to consider when looking at French film. The relationship between critic and filmmaker remains an important one, as it protects the ability of film to push boundaries and be creative, something that we see in these early filmmakers being both artists and critics themselves.

The French New Wave, influenced by Italian neo-realism and eventually birthed from France’s liberation from Germany, is a movement that sits outside of and challenges traditional forms of filmmaking. Beginning with the rise of film critic Francois Truffaut and the incredible The 400 Blows (1959), and later the extremely successful Jules and Jim (1962), the French New Wave would give rise to some of France’s most notable Directors, including Agnes Varda and the existential wonder that is Cleo From 5 to7 (1962), Jean-Luc Godard, whom Directed the wonderful Vivre Sa Vie (1962). Jacques Demy (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg 1964), Jacques Tati (Playtime 1967), Melville (Le Doulos 1962), and Robert Bresson (Au Hasard Balthazar 1966), all of whom helped bridge this connection between film, critic, and form. These films are exceptional examples of the underlying spirit that flowed from the development of the Auteur Theory, embodying and fostering creative, unconventional, experimental, and narrative based approaches that helped shape Directors from this age and in the years to follow as “artists”.

More than this though, these films were instrumental in establishing art, through film criticism, as a form that was able to push socio-political boundaries by inventing and reinventing form as a commentary on itself. This is where The New Wave follows in the footsteps of Italy’s Neo-Realism, recognizing that socio-political realities can find their voice and representation within the expression of these “independant” stories and filmmakers (influenced by the writings of Alexandre Astrue and Andre Borzin, who helped to forge the way for this theory), and that the way to move a society forward is for form to constantly be “reforming” our perspective and our awareness of both art and the social condition. It’s not surprising then that what paved the way for the French New Wave was an independent documentary movement in the late 1940’s, a movement that raised up film as the voice of the people (documentary style), and helped to frame the narrative as something necessarily concerned with realism. This is the lasting legacy of the French New Wave that would leave its mark on French Cinema and French values to this day, influencing a variety of subsequent film movements (New Waves) around the world.

From The Birth of Cinema to A Unique Cinematic Expression

“France can, with some justification, claim to have invented the whole notion of cinema.” (https://www.volta.ie/#!/page/640/a-short-history-of-french-cinema)

One could make a case that Germany’s conceptual inventions predate the Lumiere Brothers Cinematographe, or that Japan’s connection to visual storytelling and visual storytelling methods were making “moving pictures” before the Lumiere Brothers. And then there is British Augustin Le Prince’s experimentations and innovations, Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, Edward Amet in America, or even Eadweard Muybridge (see the book The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures).

But by and large, the most recognizable names and the most influential figures in bringing the moving picture to the world stage through the invention of the cinematographe were the Lumiere Brothers in France. Since 1895, the Lumiere Brothers would see their machine enamor excited voices around the globe, eventually given tangible shape by George Melies (another Frenchman) in one of the earliest and most recognizable examples of cinema as a form (the still exceptional Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon ), thus giving rise to the great cinematic vision. As French History goes, Charles Pathe and Leon Gaumont would establish the first studios in France (Pathe and Leon, which remain France’s most important studios still today), giving rise to Max LInder, who opened the world up to the idea of the “international movie star” in 1905, forever altering the landscape of the film industry as one that is both local and internationally focused (an idea that would come to both complicate and enrich the French Cinematic Tradition).

International Pressure, Social Policy, and A Complicated Industry 
If France can fairly lay claim to giving birth to the Film Industry, it can also lay claim to being one of the most prosperous industries in the years leading up to World War 1, both in its local development and in its international influence. Un Chien Andalue (1929) is a great example of an early film that held a lot of influence in surrealist cinema, which helped to give form to the horror genre.

As history tells it, it was a shortage of film stock during the First World War that led the American Industry to effectively come in and “steal the international film market.” This has led to a back and forth, often rocky relationship with America, with the competing influence of both industries, once dominated by France and then at times running parallel in its development with America with America eventually overtaking it, flowing in both directions. This ebb and flow in France’s cinematic history was defined as well by socio-political realities (Nazi Occupation and German control being the biggest one, a period that produced films like Les Enfants Du Paradise 1945, La Fille Du Puisatier 1940, Volpone 1941, Le Corbeau 1943, and L’Assasinat du Pere Noel 1941, the first film to made under Occupation, followed by Boule De Suif 1945, one of the first films made after the Liberation), and policies (quota system in the 1920’s designed to limit American Film in its restrictions on foreign imports, and eventually the  Centre National de la Cinematographie (CNC), which still governs the way taxation in France feeds back into the film industry).

What remains true today, as much as it has over the last 100 plus years, is that often when the two entities (France and America) are talking about their individual film industries, you will catch comparisons to and analysis of the other leading the way in possible reform, with their competing socio-political approaches being forefront (free market capitalism over a heavy dependence on taxation and social policy). It is France’s taxation system that is their most interesting distinctive, even setting them apart from other socially minded governance within the European Nations.

Their taxation model, which is wholly impressive in its commitment and investment, is built around indirect subsidy. This indirect subsidy comes from places like t.v. and from mandates on public operations that filter external activity back into the collective support of the arts (not unlike similar policies that require downtown businesses to support local restaurants).

What’s mainly responsible isn’t “direct subsidy (public TV channels, advance on receipts, regional funding)” but rather “indirect subsidy (mandatory investment by private TV channels).”
– Richard Brody

France’s taxation system is certainly a bit controversial, but it is also very intriguing. Positioned to both bolster it’s local industry and to protect it from Hollywood infiltration, one of the challenges it faces is managing the relationship between films that make money and films that don’t, smaller projects and more commercial fare. The upside to the system is that it means the film industry has support regardless of how profitable films are. This means that filmmakers are free to experiment and get creative, and it also attracts new filmmakers, a key source for strengthening the future of France’s local cinema.

The problem though is a system in which funding does not discriminate. Where it protects these creative forces, films of lower quality can also funded. And when the rules of the system are able to be manipulated, tying funds to budgets and giving bloated budgets for bad films that would never otherwise make their money back in a free market system, filmmakers and studios can take advantage. This blurs the line at times too between the pressure to find more commercial films that will make money and feed back into the system. All of this creates a bit of a conundrum for a system that has been successful in maintaining and developing France’s long and illustrious film identity.

“The “cultural exception”—a term that’s just twenty years old—is the way that France defines its protection of its movie business against the demands of free-trade agreements and their inevitable opening of floodgates to Hollywood movies. But the notion of the “cultural” is two-fold: there’s the artistic element and the popular one, the creation of works of art that affirm France in future history, and the creation of mass-market works that sustain the film industry as a commercial enterprise and as a social phenomenon.”
– Richard Brody (The New Yorker)

One of the curious things regarding how France continues to navigate these issues is their rather strong position settled between the smaller industries of other European Nations and the big industry of America. Protecting against the inevitable saturation of American films, something that could bring in money but hurt the local film industry and thus the Country’s identity and ethos as well, means that they aren’t really in the game of exporting either. A Country needs both a strong local industry and representation abroad, especially in an ever changing global market, to flourish.

And yet, with that said, France seems to continually find ways to stay relevant despite of these challenges, with much credit going to the continual influx and development of filmmakers, both from within and from abroad. Ever since the creation of Cannes in 1946, there has been a certain allure and prestige that comes from being associated with French cinema, one that appears enviable and desirable, particularly for any interested in contrasting this with the behemoth that is the American Industry. The benefit to this has been the fostering and development of a real sense of identity and ethos within its filmmaking community, an identity that sits somewhat outside of industry expectations. Not surprisingly, the ebb and flow of their industry before the wars and after the wars, would see both hardships and resurgences, going from The French New Wave to a down period to a slight uplift in the 1990’s where we see a new kind of hyperrealism emerge, a greater dependence on comedies, and a romanticizing of France’s past. This period would also follow the inner workings of its socio-political developments, like the development of the European Union (1993) which led to new opportunities in relationship to film across European Nations, Cultural Exception, which opened the way for the arts to maintain a distinct presence against the commercial industry (and thus leads the way for France’s unique taxation model), and eventually Canal+, a part of that unique taxation system which continues to fund the French Film Industry today.

THE FUTURE OF FRENCH CINEMA
It’s hard to know how the future of cinema develops in France, let alone on a global level. There are so many shifting dynamics when it comes to the film industry, and as things change so do global relationships, which do have an immediate impact on film industries world wide. The interesting thing about France though is that they seem positioned better than most, certainly when compared to Capitalist markets like America and China which are dependent on economic gains and losses, to weather the storm in the interim in terms of maintaining a healthy cinematic identity and an industry that can make relevant and challenging films. The benefit of strong social policies that prioritize the arts through public and indirect funding is that it treats the arts as a necessary industry, as vital to the function of life as anything else, and beyond that necessary to a society’s development. This certainly has its problems, and it will be interesting to see how France continues to navigate this space in-between its unique social policies and its relationship to consumerist Countries. But there is no doubt that their presence continues to make a strong statement about what art is, what art can be, and how art can influence and build a society in important and necessary ways. Certified Copy (2010), My Life as a Zuchinni (2016), Transit (2018), The Girl Without Hands (2016), The Jewish Cardinal (2013), Holy Motors (2012), No Home Movie (2015), Amour (2012), Amelie (2001), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), and The Past (2013) are all examples of phenomenal and genre shaping films that have emerged from the French Film Industry in the past 10 or so years, and one should expect that they will continue to find ways to push form, reinvent and challenge the status quo.

*Here is my full list of French Films I watched on my travels, rated, ranked and reviewed:
https://letterboxd.com/davetcourt/list/film-travels-2020-france-in-progress/

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_France
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/mar/22/french-cinema-short-history
https://nofilmschool.com/2014/11/infographic-your-guide-history-french-cinema
http://www.frenchfilms.org/french-cinema-history.html
https://www.superprof.us/blog/history-of-french-cinema/
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/the-future-of-french-cinema
https://indiefilmhustle.com/french-new-wave/
https://indiefilmhustle.com/french-new-wave/
Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture, and Marxist Critique
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2059436416681576
https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/njms/1/1/article-p67.xml
https://www.britannica.com/art/auteur-theory

Click to access 01DavidTregdeEJFall13.pdf

French Cinema: From Its Beginnings to the Present By Rémi Fournier Lanzoni

 

As “one of the oldest film markets in the world”, Japan’s cinematic story is a fascinating, always exciting, and often inspiring narrative to unpack. It is ripe with the expected markers that tend to be shared by cinema worldwide- the arrival of the Cinematograph, the shift from social commentary to propaganda during the World War, the usual struggle to overcome international pressures, the onset of television, and a decline in theater going. But peek behind the curtain of this shared narrative and the story of film in Japan is bursting with socio-political intrigue, history and unexpected twists that have allowed it to carve its own path in the midst of these things.

Two of the biggest characteristics that have defined Japanese Cinema are
a) history and
b) uniqueness.

Finding It’s History and It’s Uniqueness
Japan’s history and its uniqueness are really two parts of the same coin that help to define its particular style of filmmaking. I don’t mean that in the way of uniformity. The richness of Japan’s cinematic landscape is diverse. I mean that in the way of distinctives, which have allowed Japan to constantly innovate, create, and recreate over the last 100 years. And there is little doubt that Japan’s history, and its awareness of this history, played a significant role in defining and shaping this trajectory.

Being Canadian, one of the unique facets of living in North America is that, given our more recent development, we lack the same history of those Countries and Nations and territories in the East (including Europe in the West). It wasn’t until the onset of the American Western that America was able to establish a recognizable history of its own, and in Canada it is even less established because our film industry carries far less of an international presence.

Japanese cinema, in contrast, grew out of its ability to tell the stories of its past, a genre of film called jidai-geki that focused mainly on the Edo Period. One of the ways this benefited Japanese film is that as the idea of moving pictures was coming into focus, Japan had a clear and given narrative/ethos to pull from in developing its early films.

As its film industry developed, it was able to then reimagine how these stories could be told and retold early on in the forms development, allowing it to forge its own path rather than being influenced from abroad. This also saw the quick adaptation from the Japanese historical drama to the modern drama as the Country began to learn how to apply film to Japan’s modern context. And while Japan would to explore these modern contexts over the 100 plus year development of its industry, the power of its formation as an independent and unique cinematic landscape would come from its ability to connect its present to its past.

Japan’s rich history is of course present in films about Samurai and conquest, and as well in the spiritual themes that are present in its heritage, but it might be most apparent in its indebtedness to its storytelling past. There has been much written about the Japanese Benshi, but one of the things that sets the Country’s early development apart is the use of these oral storytellers to enhance the experience of the silent film era. This gave their films a theatrical presence that connected the visual to their tradition and heritage.

More interesting yet though is how the Benshi contributed to the development of these early films.

In addition to the great influence that benshi had at the performance level, many famous benshi had strong input at the film making level. At cinemas managed by large film production and distribution companies, it was common for benshi to be shown film scripts before production began, and they often demanded a rewrite if they disagreed with any part. Thus, at this point in the development of cinema, it was the performance side that held greater influence than the production side. In order to maintain his or her position among great competition, each benshi developed an individual style.

As Japan developed a cinematic industry, with its first film company emerging in 1909, the rise of its own form of film criticism (The Pure Film Movement) in 1910 would eventually lead the industry away from the Benshi and towards more concrete developments of particular cinematic styles. But there is no question that the Benshi had a lasting effect on how Japanese film would develop, with many of the styles and genres retaining these influences, including the thriving of silent film well into the 1930’s (long after the West had abandoned them), such as An Inn in Tokyo (1935).

Film and Politics
Beyond this history though, Japan’s modern political landscape, wars, tragedies, and natural disasters continued to play a key role in how its film industry would develop and in the kind of styles and genres that would emerge. Reaching back to the arrival of the Lumiere Brothers Cinematograph in 1897, Japan’s conquest of Taiwan around the same time, along with its lengthy war with China and the American Occupation, all gave definition to its cultural development, be it an eventual focus on Empire and expansion, the tragic genocide of Beijing and the Chinese capital of Nanking (of which the harrowing City of Life and Death, 2009, captures in a powerful way), or its relationship to America.

Both expansion and the events of World War 2 (Chinese Genocide and American Occupation) gave clear definition to the films of the 1930’s and 1940’s, which is still recognized as a time of ongoing innovation and social development. Themes of Empire and propaganda films under Government control come to shape the landscape leading up to the war and through the war, while the shift from Empire into what is now considered Japan’s first Golden Age (1950’s-1960’s) under American control led to a whole new kind of filmmaking altogether.

“In the years following the war, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur was tasked with revising the Japanese constitution and demilitarizing the nation. Japan was ordered to abolish the Meiji Constitution, thus ending the Empire of Japan. On May 3, 1947, the country adopted the Constitution of Japan and formally became Japan.”
– Japans Influence on Cinema After WW2

American Occupation and The Japanese Identity
One of the key factors at play in the American Occupation following World War 2 was the SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers), which oversaw the redevelopment of the film industry at this time (1945-1952). Most relevant is the fact that this was a foreign institution (the branch which oversaw the film industry was called the CIE: Civil Information Education Section), which affected the industry in two major ways- it paved the way for an influx of American films into the Japanese landscape, and worked to reshape the Japanese industry according to American idealism, making Japanese film accessible abroad. This would forever alter the Japanese landscape going forward.

“During the occupation, MacArthur sought a way to combat the propaganda of Japanese cinema. An enlightenment campaign was launched, in which Hollywood studios would screen American films throughout Japan. Over 600 films were distributed, each showcasing the American way of life. The goal was to introduce America as a political, social, and cultural model for the Japanese population.”

Under the American Occupation, and in the period following the American Occupation, Japan saw a period of real innovation and creativity, both in the development of studios and in the rise of influential Directors. Leading the way during this time was Japan’s most popular and well known Director, Kurosawa, who navigated the international relationship with great success, or Kenji Mizoguchi, who made the impressive and influential Ugetsu (1953), and the monumental effort that is Tokyo Story (1953), Directed by Yasujirō Ozu. This era also included the first color film (Carmen Comes Home, 1951), and at its peak the Human Condition Trilogy.

On Rashomon.

“Rashomon showcased Kurosawa’s skill as a director. He had embraced Western filmmaking, the works of Shakespeare, and American pulp novels. By combining those elements with traditional Eastern culture, Kurosawa’s films would break away from the traditional Japanese style of directors like Ozu and Mizoguchi. His work would find an international audience, cementing him as a legendary director.”

The epic Seven Samurai (1954), one of the first films to really establish and navigate this American-Japanese distinctive with immense success, is a key example of a film that protects Japanese identity but was made with American influences and equally for American audiences. It’s success, and its notoriety comes from Japan’s ability to navigate this terrain well.

Since American Occupation was interested in demilitarization, the outflow of this directive (the flip side of of the censorship that defined Japan’s propaganda films) was an increased focus on social concern (such as we saw with the Leftist influences in the 1930’s in shomin-geki films, films about the common people) and a critique of Empire (and the Emperor).

“By displacing the recent war onto the more distant past, the films could be made palatable to both domestic and international audiences. But no displacement, no tricks, no hidden meanings were required to appreciate the obvious artistry on view.”(http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Independent-Film-Road-Movies/Japan-THE-SECOND-GOLDEN-AGE.html#ixzz6Iw0zcGjD)

What is important to note here, and which plays into the uniqueness and history of Japanese Cinema, is that not unlike its ability to navigate previous periods of censorship, war, and natural disaster (including the great earthquake and Bombing of Tokyo that destroyed a good chunk of Japan’s early film), Japan’s response to the developments of its more modern age, whether tragic or prosperous, led to both a decisive and intentional incorporation of these events into their ethos through the art of cinema, along with a return again and again to their lengthy history and roots and values. When you look at international influence in other Countries, it often represents a serious point of struggle and contention. To see it in Japan is to encounter a sense of confidence that works to retain their identity over and against it, and often alongside it.

Consider the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is through cinema that this event became a means of introspection and identity (Godzilla, 1954), going on to inspire an entire genre of film that is distinctly and recognizably Japanese. Or consider the later emergence of Anime in the 2000’s, reaching back to films like the incredible Millennium Actress (2001) and establishing the famous Studio Ghibli. Following a series of challenging events through the 1970’s and beyond (all of which gave their own distinctive voice to Japanese cinema), not the least of which was the economic crash (the demise of the Bubble Economy), the Aum Shinrikyo massacre, and the great Kubo earthquake, Anime (along with an increased focus on Indie films thanks to the development of the Japan Film Commission Promotion Council) took the Country by storm, using the newly developed multiplexes to stake their claim as a key part of the Japanese ethos, representing over 60 percent of Japanese film development in 2000 and beyond. Interestingly, one of the key embraces of the Anime industry was being distinctly cultural but also internationally accessible, a distinctive of Japanese cinema and a mark of its strength of identity.

Japanese Identity and the Future
With the modern success of a Director like Hirokazu Kore-eda, who made the popular Shoplifters (2018), and powerful and emotional films like I Wish (2011) and Like Father, Like Son (2013), and the success of my personal favorite more recent Japanese film by Yojiro Takita, Departures (2009), it is clear that Japan has had a lengthy and complicated history that has seen it develop to where it is today, one that pushes and pulls the industry through the last 120 years of cinematic development, but one that also reaches much beyond this into a long and illustrious past that gave Japanese film its identity and ethos. This helped give Japanese film that ability to retain a sense of inventiveness and creativity that was distinctly and uniquely Japanese, even when things threatened their identity.

Consider that even before the moving picture arrived in Japan, their familiarity with the idea of cinema had already found its expression in gentō (utsushi-e), the magic lantern, a form of visual storytelling that directly impacted and informed how Japan entered the cinematic age with connective purpose. Or the oral, storytelling traditions that gave Japanese film its spiritual core with a key embrace of spirit, ghosts and eternal themes, all of which were evident since Shozo Makino pioneered Japanese film in 1908. You can see Japan’s mark on cinema in its early and revolutionary embrace of woman actresses (Harumi Hanayagi, the first woman actress, in the Glow of Life (1918), and in the development of cinematic forms and filming styles like the initial adoption and development of the close up and cut back (see the Captain’s Daughter). Heck, there is even an argument that can be made that An Inn in Tokyo (1935) paved the way and jump started the neo-realism movement in Europe (and the New Waves). The fact that this was also still a silent film is kind of astonishing.

What stands out about Japan is its ability to survive and to thrive, most importantly within the pressures of international influence. This is an impressive feat that has seen Japan develop parallel to the United States rather than within or beneath its wide spread influence, rewarding the world with a rich cultural footprint and impressive slate of films that is able to reveal and develop the narrative of its national story and its people for their Country and for the world.

Here is a link to the films that I watched on my Film Travels (ranked, rated and reviewed):
https://letterboxd.com/davetcourt/list/film-travels-2020-japan-in-process/

SOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Japan
What Is Japanese Cinema: A History by YOMOTA INUHIKO
https://www.volta.ie/#!/page/651/a-short-history-of-japanese-cinema
https://www.ukessays.com/essays/film-studies/brief-history-of-japanese-cinema-film-studies-essay.php
https://schoolworkhelper.net/early-japanese-film-cinema/
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Japanese_cinema
https://www.tiff.net/the-review/the-big-five-of-japanese-cinema
https://www.faena.com/aleph/articles/a-brief-but-essential-introduction-to-japanese-cinema/

Click to access japan_history.pdf

http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Independent-Film-Road-Movies/Japan-THE-SECOND-GOLDEN-AGE.html
A New History of Japanese Cinema: A Century of Narrative Film by Isolde Standish
https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/japans-influence-on-cinema-after-wwii/

 

 

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Having been immersed these last few weeks in Fleming Rutledge’s phenomenal and monumental The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus, 40: The Temptation of Christ (a recently released and independent 2020 release available for rent or purchase on most platforms) proved to be a fitting. highly visual, and complimentary addition for understanding and ruminating on Rutledge’s treaties of the nature of the Cross and the work of Salvation.

Central to Rutledge’s understanding of the Gospel and the Christian Witness lies this distinction between capital letter Sin and small letter sin. As Rutledge writes, “The Church has always been tempted to recast the Christian story in terms of individual fault and guilt that can be overcome by a decision to repent.” And this temptation comes from our need to control the narrative of the Cross in particular ways through a misapplication of the idea of “sin” as that which condemns and that which saves.

And yet for Paul, the earliest written witness to the Death and Resurrection of Christ, the dominant understanding, framed by (capital letter) Sin, is that of the “Powers” that hold us bondage, the Powers being Sin (evil and the devil, understood in its rich theological and literary context) and Death. For Paul, “the sequence is not sin-repentance-grace-forgiveness, but grace-sin-deliverance-repentance-grace.” As Rutledge points out, grace derives the sequence from first to last, with both Grace (the Power of God) and Sin and Death (the Power of Evil or the Evil One) precluding this movement from grace to grace.

This might sound like mere semantics, speaking of the same word in both capital and small letter form, but this understanding of God’s saving work is integral to understanding what it is God is doing on the Cross, the Way for which John came to prepare, the moment in which this film begins and opens with, and the powerful imagery of of Lent that we find in its depiction of Christ’s time in the Wilderness.

From the Temptation to the Cross: Finding The Grand Narrative
To understand what Jesus is doing, and what the Temptation Narrative is reconciling, we must understand the declarative and proclamative truth that the Cross declares, which is that “what is wrong (the injustice and suffering that we find in this world) is being made right”, both in the world and in us, both individually and collectively. The Cross, framed in the light of the Resurrection, declares to us that God is not under the power of the Evil One, and that the Powers that hold us bondage can be resisted. “Yeshua means God saves, and Matthews reference makes explicit the connection between the Messiah’s name and salvation from sin.” (Rutledge). As the film so aptly depicts in connecting Jesus’ formative years to His time in the wilderness, who Jesus is (God incarnate) and what Jesus does is one in the same- God’s saving work.

In one of the film’s flashback sequences, we hear a conversation between Joseph and Yeshua, where Joseph tells him, “Sin is the reason that we suffer Yeshua, it is the reason that we die.” This is framed against the visual and symbolic force of the Temptation that drives this film, a depiction the film brings to the forefront in through its grand and sweeping narrative context. It is here that we gain a picture, in its expressive and Mystical Eastern context (something we in the West have become adverse to), of this story of Good and Evil, competing forces that exist and persist outside and above ourselves, a spiritual warfare in which we have (all) become evil’s conscripts. Knowing that the scriptwriter for this film is a big, big fan of the horror genre, it is not surprising to me that this would prove a perfect playing field in which to evoke these very spiritually laden pictures, ideas and truths through tonal expressions befitting the genre. And not unexpectedly, the story is brought to life within some recognizable horror constructs (including the use of score, tension, and camera work that guides this tension between the known and the unknown, the tension and the resistance) able to capture the gravity of this narrative reality in its Scriptural context.

The Temptation, Righteousness and Understanding God’s Saving Work
Paramount to Rutledge’s understanding of the Crucifixion is her understanding of the theological idea of justification, or righteousness. When understood within modern constructs of penal substitution (the common understanding of salvation that sees our small letter sin (action) as the cause of Jesus’ death, and Jesus’ moral goodness (righteousness) as that which saves us from our sin), justification ultimately becomes enslaved to a works based solution that misses the true power of this grand narrative of The Temptation and the Crucifixion to which it points (which the film does through some nice use of flash forwards), and its proclamation that what is wrong is being (and has been) made right.

What is striking to recognize about the temptation narrative is how connected the Powers (capital letter Sin) is to the notion of power (small letter sin). Each of the temptations represents a concern for power, the power to attend to our suffering, our happiness, our benefit. It is through resisting this power that Christ shifts the view from Himself to the needs of the world. It is here that Sin and Death become expressed through the primary concern in scripture for the reality of injustice (and justice, or justification) in the world. This is why Rutledge believes, and often restates, that the Righteousness of Jesus, of God, is not a noun, but a verb. “It is not so much that God is righteous but that he does righteousness (justification).” We know this intuitively, but perhaps no more intimately than in our times of suffering. This is where we the Cross becomes good news. God, in Jesus, sees, identifies and is acting upon the injustice of this world, making this world new, bringing to bear the New Heavens and the New Earth, the new Creation. Therefore, through this proclamation we have hope.

“God did not son to the earth to condemn it, he sent His son to the earth to save it” is the declaration that we hear from Jesus’ definitive proclamation in the films climatic moment, a powerful and poignant depiction of Good and Evil standing face to face, a moment in which life is raised above death (in the powerful imagery of the lamb) as the greater Power.

“Were it not for the mercy of God surrounding us, we would have no perspective from which to view sin, for we would be entirely subject to it. That is the reason for affirming that wherever sin is unmasked and confessed, God’s redemptive power is already present and acting.” (Rutledge). What I really liked about the film is the way it connects this temptation narrative both to these flashbacks and flashforwards. It helps to remind us that the Cross is not retributive in nature, but declarative. It is a present work, not simply a historical reality. Jesus willingly sees a world under the Power of Sin and Death and aligns Himself to it, with it, and within it. He embodies the injustice of the Powers of Sin and Death and in so doing declares God’s justice (our justification) as that which is able to make what is wrong right.

This is why, as the film ultimately declares in its final (and beautiful) sequence, we must continue to walk in faith even when we cannot see. This is the truth of our already-not yet already. We are called as participants in what God is doing on the Cross, guided by the Word, the Word that is Christ, the Word, as Rutledge puts it, that is the Cross. This is the Way forward, not away from the suffering of our present reality but towards it, because in God’s righteousness, in His seeing, identifying and acting on injustice, this world is being made right again within this reality. To walk in the Way is to see this more clearly, is for this truth, the proclamation of the Cross, to be made known in our lives and in the world.

Here’s the link to the film’s info on Letterboxd:
https://letterboxd.com/davetcourt/film/40-the-temptation-of-christ/

I had the great privilege of hearing a recent interview with Fleming Rutledge, the author of The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death Of Jesus (a book I am currently working through and reflecting on), talking about her body of work and what a lifetime of preaching, pastoring, and writing have taught her in terms of big ideas, significant markers, and important themes/focuses (on the On Script Podcast if you were interested).

New to Rutledge’s body of work, I found this interview helpful in offering me a glimpse inside the life, the mind, and the spirit that guided her to pen this particular work that I am reading through now. Of interest to me was hearing her expound on the idea of the “Powers” of Sin and Death that I reflected on in my previous blog. These Powers for her are the third part of three central “agencies” reflected in Paul and the Gospels (and the whole of the apocalyptic tradition that we see throughout the latter part of the Old Testament and the whole of the New) that are active in this world- God, Humanity, and Satan (which in scholarship gains and holds many different names and references).

I wrote in my previous blog about how seeing Sin (and Death) as an agency rather than a matter of works and moral conditioning, an idea I first encountered in N.T. Wright, is necessary for expounding on the different facets of the Christian life in appropriate ways. This is especially necessary when it comes do discussing and approaching the Cross, because beginning with these three essential agencies protects these auxiliary theological ideas (like small letter “sin”) from turning salvation into a works based belief system and ending up with a Cross that is thrown off balance and that symbolizes our ideas of how God works as opposed to the work God is doing on the Cross.

Understanding the Cross, and Jesus’ death on the Cross, as something that speaks to a world that is not right and that is being made right is best understood not in the trenches of working out our salvation, but rather from within the larger narrative to which this discussion of salvation belongs. Seeing “Sin” as “Power” allows us to see that a not right world is under bondage to a third agency that holds a real (and active) presence and force, and that the Cross is ultimately Jesus’ declaration/proclamation that this world (including you and I) is no longer under its power because, at is declared, God is not under its power. This is the Cross’ primary, declarative force, and it is the means through which we can begin to make sense of the death of Jesus as necessary, and the means by which we can begin to flesh out the theology that this informs.

The Cross and God’s Justification
It is, then, from here that we can begin to appropriately move from the Cross to matters of what, theologically speaking, we can call justification. What is important to understand about the idea of justification (a word that carries close to mirror relationship to “righteousness”, or the idea of being made right) is that matters of “justice” and “injustice” are its primary concern. For Rutledge, “The all-important connection between the method used to execute Jesus and the meaning of his death cannot be grasped unless we plumb the depths of what is meant by injustice.” (p106) Understanding the unjust death of Jesus as something that is concerned with shedding light on the injustice that we encounter in this world is a two fold awareness, one that begins with that larger narrative of the Powers and flows out into a concern for our (humanities) place in this narrative as the second of these three primary agencies.

A Justice For the World 
Just to dial this back once again to reinforce that connective piece that was so important for me in rediscovering the Cross over these last number of years, if we begin, as many Christians do, with the Cross primarily emphasizing our small letter “sin” (as in, because we were sinners Jesus died for our sins, and on the Cross atones for those sins), what we end up with is a story that moves from us out towards the concerns of the world. And yet the concern of the Cross and the reason for Jesus’ death begins with His concern for the world. As Rutledge writes, The condemnation of Jesus means redemption for the world, and by extension God’s condemnation of the sin of his people is part of his redemptive purpose. (p106)

What we encounter in the Cross is not simply the declaration that our sins have been forgiven, but that the Powers of Sin and Death have been defeated. This is more than simply a matter of semantics. What we are stepping into on the Way of Jesus is the declaration that this world is not right and God, through Jesus, is making it right. This is what we are called to be participants of, is the New Creation, the New Heavens and the New Earth.

And the key marker of this New Creation? God’s justice.

“God’s justice is not vague or amorphous. It is not general or indeterminate. It is specific and particular, showing that God is attentive to the material details of human need.” (p109)

And just to underscore this point, Rutledge goes on to say,

“When we speak of setting right, we are not talking about a little rearrangement here and a little improvement there. From the perspective of the Old and New Testaments, the whole creation has gone drastically awry. The incarnation of the Son of the God should not be understood as the divine benediction on all that is. It was an incarnation unto the cross, and therefore an incarnation that sets a question mark over against the way things are.” (p126)

This is what bears out our hope. Is small letter “sin” part of this? Absolutely. All of us are called to be participants in the work God is doing, and by nature of this work sin is a product or outflow of the Powers that hold this world bondage. But the concern of God’s salvation, Christ’s saving work is much bigger than our sin. It is concerned with seeing all of Creation being made new.

Justification and The Wrath of God
One of the most difficult aspects of the Cross to deal with is the idea of God’s wrath. But if the Cross is about God’s concern for the injustice in this world, it means that God’s wrath must play a role. And one of the biggest obstacles to understanding God’s wrath is the tendency to define the Cross and Jesus’ death according to our small letter sin. When we do this, God’s wrath ends up solely squared on us rather than on the injustice that we find in the world. And we begin to imagine or shape God’s work according to retribution rather than restoration. We are left with some form of salvation that understands God needed to punish us for our sin, and therefore Jesus takes on the punishment in our place so that we can be saved. And it’s only from here that we are then able to reconstruct a Christian idea of a God for the world.

When we begin with the Cross as God’s interest for the whole of creation, a creation in bondage to the Powers, this allows us to then to see the whole work of God as being manifested in our lives rather than the other way around. This is an incredibly freeing thing, because it allows us to then reframe what God’s wrath is directed towards. As Rutledge puts it,

All of us are capable of anger about something. God’s anger, however, is pure. It does not have the maintenance of privilege as its object, but goes out on behalf of those who have no privileges. The wrath of God is not an emotion that flares up from time to time, as though God had temper tantrums; it is a way of describing his absolute enmity against all wrong and his coming to set matters right. (p129)

And then she goes on to outline a crucial point when it comes to matters of God’s wrath.

To be sure, most people, of whatever color, tend to be intensely interested in justice when it is for themselves. It is the notion of justice for all that is missing from much of our public discourse. (p128)

At least one of the problems that arises with the idea of God’s wrath is that when we see it as God’s anger towards us, we deprive ourselves of the ability to see God’s wrath in the context of God’s saving work. This is why so much of our theology and our theological discourse remains so limited. When we narrow God’s work down to the saving of individual lives according to a works based mindset, we limit our ability to exercise what C.S. Lewis called the “Spiritual Imagination” in the injustice spaces that we encounter in the world. We are forced to find something other than the Powers to attach our anger to, which opens us up to that inevitable practice of creating ins and outs of perpetrators, villains and victims

The real problem, and this is something that Rutledge does an amazing job of unpacking, is that when we narrow salvation down to what God is doing in my life in saving me from my sin, the danger is that we either a) fail to see the injustice in this world, or b) contribute to these acts of injustice through our oppression and condemnation of others. “Righteousness has the character of a verb rather than a noun’ it is not so much that God is righteous but that he does righteousness.” Which plays out into this idea of the Cross as making this world right as opposed to the righteous one making me “righteous”.

But to think of the Cross in this way is messy. We like our formulas. And formulas that can easily define who is in and who is out are even more attractive. The reality of God’s wrath though remains a fluid force. As Rutledge points out, it can be as concerned with an individual as it is with large groups who are either being oppressed or doing the oppressing. It is constantly condemning while at the same time reforming. It attends to at times while in other times responding to in pain and remorse. God’s wrath is both judgment and salvation at the same time. And the truth is that none of us are operating on the same plain at the same time all the time. Sometimes we are doing the oppressing, and sometimes we are the oppressed. And as Rutledge points out, “Even more astonishingly, he (JEsus) underwent helplessness and humiliation not only for the victimized but also for the perpetrators” (p151) all at once. Which in the grander picture of things suggests, “in the final analysis, the crucifixion of Christ for the sin of the world reveals that it is not only the victims of oppression and injustice who are in need of God’s deliverance, but also the victimizers. Each of us is capable, under certain circumstances, of being a victimizer.”

To encounter the Cross is the encounter the messiness of this reality. It exposes what we all share in common- the desire for justice in the unjust places of our lives, but moves us to consider, as God sees, the injustice that we encounter in the world and the injustice that we all partake in. This is shift the Cross forces us to consider, and this shift forces us to move in this direction precisely because this is the work the Cross is interested in and where the Cross points us towards. The good news is, this is where God’s wrath can begin to take shape as a more hopeful and life giving reality.

“We are not likely to be attracted to a righteous God unless we are looking for justice. The meaning of the word righteousness in Hebrew, however, is a world away from our idea of legalism or moralism. When we read in the Old Testament that God is just and righteous, this doesn’t refer to a threatening abstract quality that God has over aginst us. It is much more like a verb than a noun, because it refers to the power of God to make right what has been wrong.” (p133)

The Cross is, as Rutledge puts it, “the movement of God toward us even when our backs are turned away from him.” And once again, this is an uncomfortable idea because it means that we are not in control. “The radical message underlying it, and the one we resist, is that God does this right-making in spite of our resistance. This is the real meaning of Pauls use of dikaiosis, traditionally translated justification, but better translated rectification (rectify from the Latin rectus) or righteousness.” And it is because we are not in control that Jesus’ death calls into the realm of our awareness, into our line of sight the reality of the injustice in our lives and in this world as God’s main concern. The Christian faith does not allow us to remain ignorant about this. It is not static and it is not apathetic towards the Power that Sin holds in this world.

Building A Bridge Between My Salvation and the Salvation of the World
One of the things Rutledge does which I found so helpful in trying to make sense of the messiness of God’s justifying work in my life and in the world is that she creates these inroads between the individual and the collective in matters of injustice. These two things are of equal concern in the eyes of God. He sees us as readily as he sees the death of millions. One is not more or less tragic than the other. One of the things this frees us to do is take what we know and experience personally and apply it to places that we could not and would not be able to understand. And what frees us to do this is our understanding of capital letter Sin as the same Power that holds this whole world in bondage. It recognizes that in the fluidity of God’s saving work, the one place that God’s saving work must make sense is in the injust places, the not right realities of our world. “God’s new creation must be a just one, or the promises of God will seem like mockery to those whose defenselessness has been exploited by the powerful.”

And as Rutledge points out, this truth encompasses the whole of God’s justification (or righteousness), including the spiritual paradigms of forgiveness, restoration, judgment and salvation. “Forgiveness must be understood in its relationship to justice if the Christian gospel is to be allowed its full scope.” 

How can we begin to speak even of forgiveness, let alone transformation, in the worst of the worst situations? The extermination of millions does not cry out for forgiveness. Never mind millions; what about just one baby burned up in a microwave oven by its own father? After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Forgiveness is not enough. There must be justice too. (p126)

And further,

If we think of Christian theology and ethics purely in terms of forgiveness, we will  have neglected a central aspect of God’s own character and will be in no position to understand the cross in its fullest dimension. Furthermore, if we fail to take account of God’s justice, we will miss the extraordinary way in which it is recast in the New Testament as kerygma.

Kerygma simply means “proclamation.” And the proclamation is this. That God is making this world right. That God sees, identifies (the two primary starting points for Rutledge) and acts towards injustice. And we can trust that He is because Jesus, through His death on the Cross, saw, identified and acted towards the injustice that holds this world in bondage by taking on the oppression of this world.

“Who would have thought that the same God who passed judgment, calling down woe upon the religious establishment (Matt. 23; Luke 11), would come under his own judgment and woe? This is a shockingly immoral and un-religious idea; as we shall see over and over again, however, the crucifixion reveals God placing himself under his own sentence. The wrath of God has lodged in God’s own self. Perfect justice is wrought in the self offering of the Son, who alone of all human beings was perfectly righteous. Therefore no one, neither victim nor victimizer, can claim any exemption from judgment on one’s own merits, but only the merits of the Son.”

And Jesus does this by way of giving us a picture of His wrath over and against His mercy. “The wrath of God, which plays such a large role in both the Old and New Testaments, can be embraced because it comes wrapped in God’s mercy. To appropriate the inspired misstatement of Shakespeares Dogberry, the cross shows us how we, in Christ, are condemned into redemption. ” And it is because of this that we can see the fuller picture of what Jesus is doing in dying on the Cross. “The goal is restoration and renewal”, a truth that has the power to reframe our perspective of God’s relationship to us and to this world, and open up the Christian Imagination to the immense and incredible picture and possibility of a world renewed.

“Thus the whole area of God’s justice and righteousness has been relocated from the usual tit-for-tat scheme of crime and punishment into a completely new sphere where the righteousness of God (dikaiosyne), understood as power to grant what it requires, has dismantled the old system of righteousness by-the-law and incorporated us into the new-world-creating righteousness of God. When this is enacted in our world by faith, however imperfectly, we know that God is on the move.”